Shein aims to raise up to HK$13.86 billion ($1.77 billion) in its Hong Kong IPO, despite a valuation drop to $27 billion from $100 billion in 2022.

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The fast fashion e-commerce company that few in the tech industry had even heard of two years ago is aiming to raise $1 billion at a valuation of $100 billion. Last June, the company told us that its valuation was at the “billion-dollar level” as of its last funding round in 2020. The company counts Tiger Global, IDG and Sequoia among its existing investors. The company tests a great variety of cheap clothing in small batches, and if data shows that something is selling well, it quickly places more orders with these suppliers to sell even more. At the end of last year, Beijing proposed a deluge of regulations on overseas-listed Chinese firms, including one stipulating that a company whose main management mostly consists of Chinese nationals or executives who live in China, and its main business operating location is in China, must go through a filing process with China’s securities authority. Anecdotally, we’ve heard that some venture capital firms in China have begun offering citizenship applications as part of their post-investment service. Shein is in talks with General Atlantic for this new funding round, according to Bloomberg. According to app analytics firm Apptopia, Shein was the second most downloaded shopping app in the US last year after Amazon. Shein is not without challenges.