Ymer Venture Capital and Legend Capital closed a syndicate investment in Beijing based United Automobile Association (UAA) last week.

We are thrilled to be an investor in this great company which has been leading the way in China’s automotive roadside assistance (e.g. American Automotive Association) category since UAA was founded a little over a year ago. (Before you pass judgment on the “…a little over a year ago” keep in mind roadside assistance is an emerging segment in China that only took hold a couple years ago.)

We have been big fans of the company for a long time, specifically because we believe the management team, led by seasoned entrepreneur Charles (Zhengyao) Lu, has demonstrated time and time again that they are capable of immaculate execution on the back of solid domain knowledge.

Furthermore, we believe there are heaps of synergies waiting to be tapped (and developed) between UAA and our other automotive investment, Chinacars.

We plan to write a longer post about this investment in the next couple weeks explaining what we like about UAA, where we see roadside assistance and China’s overall automotive business heading, and what we hope UAA will become.

In the meantime, there are a number of car related blogs that we’ve posted over the past year which should provide a short-term fix.