Tech financing in China this week
Don’t miss out our headlines this week: Airbnb-like platform to connect overseas hosts with Chinese travelers; Razer lands USD75M from Chinese VR investor to develop OSVR; Why Lenovo’s parent company is pouring money into O2O liquor business.
Not just gaming: Razer lands $75M from a Chinese VR investor
Eric Sun
Chinese IT company Hangzhou Liaison Interactive invested USD 75 million in San Diego-based Razer to further develop its Open-Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform.
Founded in 1998, Razer is known as the world’s leading brand in high-end precision gaming products. The company is also the founder of the world’s largest virtual reality platform, Open-Source Virtual Reality (OSVR).
Airbnb-like platform aims to connect Chinese hosts & travelers
Jack Niu
China’s Airbnb-like platform, onehome.me, recently secured tens of millions of USD in Pre-A financing led by investors backed by Alibaba.
Riverhill Fund, backed by Alibaba, and Morningside Ventures, which invested in Sohu portal and China’s version of Apple, Xiaomi, led the round of funding, which closed last month, Tencent reported on Thursday.
The C2C platform targets the overseas travel market for Chinese travelers. According to the China National Tourism Administration, Chinese overseas tourism reached 120 million in 2015.
Content production startup MeWe valued at $300 million
Wanbin Zhang
After the completion of its Series A financing, MeWe media, a Beijing-based online video producer, is valued at RMB two billion (USD 300 million), Tencent Tech reported on Wednesday.
Cornerstone Venture Capital, one of China’s oldest VC funds, invested in this round of funding. But MeWe has yet to disclose the funding amount. Innovation Works, a venture capital fund founded by Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of Google China and founder of Microsoft Research Asia, led a round of Pre-A financing just days after MeWe was founded.
Why Lenovo is pouring money into O2O liquor business?
Dora Zhang
The parent company of Lenovo, China’s PC market leader, laid out their latest strategy to further explore the liquor O2O sector by confirming their latest investment.
Legend Holdings, Lenovo’s parent company, in January injected RMB 230 million (USD 35 million) into Jiubianli, or “Instant Liquor”, an O2O liquor provider in central China’s Zhengzhou city.
Zhu Yonghua, the director of Legend Holdings’ modern agriculture and food investment department, revealed the reasons for the investment, the 21st Century Business Herald reported on Wednesday.
Didi Kuaidi raises another USD 1 billion to take on Uber China?
Catherine Lai
Didi Kuaidi has received at least USD one billion in commitments for a new financing round, says Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source.
AllChinaTech reached out to Didi Kuaidi, but a spokesperson declined to comment.
Bloomberg’s source says Didi will be valued at over USD 20 billion, once the round closes. The round is oversubscribed, and the company is still negotiating terms with investors, according to the source.
Didi’s current valuation is USD 16.5 billion. It received USD three billion last September in its last financing round.
Online fitness platform tackles China’s $10B weight loss industry
Eric Sun
Weight Loss Era, an online fitness platform, has received RMB 20 million (approximately USD three million) in pre-A series financing, Li Yuxin, CEO of the company announced on Monday.
This round of funding was led by Shenzhen Oriental Fortune Capital, an investment management company based in south China, followed by Hongxi Fund, a public assets management company.
The Uber of Crowdsourcing: Mission Rabbit differentiates itself from local players
Ke Jin
Renwutu, a Chinese person-to-person (P2P) job sharing platform founded in 2014, has landed tens of millions of RMB in Series A funding, reported Chinese tech news site Ctsbw.com on Saturday.
The investment was made by LangmafengVC, a venture capital firm investing mainly in energy, finance, digital media and collaborated services. After receiving angel investment in 2014 and pre-A funding in 2015, Renwutu aims to focus on improving its products and technical performance with the investment from this round.
KiKa Tech’s keyboard app to go global with $30M new financing
Danielle Li
Chinese mobile developer KiKa Tech told AllChinaTech on Tuesday that it secured RMB 200 million (USD 30.6 million) in Series B funding from Honghe Capital, Bole Zongheng and Zhu Ye, CEO of the game company Zeus Interactive.
The large new round of funding will amp up KiKa Tech’s plans to consolidate their strength in markets they’ve already grabbed a share of, including the U.S., Europe, Brazil and Mexico. According to Bill Hu, Founder and CEO of KiKa Tech, KiKa has taken as much as a 60% share of the third-party input method market in America.
Chinese O2O service provider secures $6.9m in Series A financing
Jack Niu
Beijing-based Duoxi, an O2O laundry service provider, received RMB 45 million (USD 6.9 million) in Series A financing just two months after it merged with Yunxiyi, another O2O laundry service provider, Chinese tech news site iyiou.com reported on Monday.
This round of funding was led by Qifu Capital, which focuses on TMT, modern services and new materials, and followed by Newsion Venture Capital, Duoxi’s angel investor.
Chinese online medical giant invests millions in dental SaaS provider
Eric Sun
Ding Xiang Yuan (DXY), a medical online social networking service for China’s physicians and medical professionals, confirmed it has invested tens of millions of RMB (millions of USD) in LinkedCare, a dental Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider, in order to restructure its data flow and provide digitized service to its customers, Tencent’s Tech News channel reported on Monday.
Founded in July 2000, DXY is China’s largest online medical portal used by five million Chinese physicians and life science professionals, with an average of 1.8 million daily page views. There are more than four million registered members.
