Tech financing in China this week
Don’t miss our headlines this week: Video media platform Baofeng acquires 3 companies with USD 476 M; Coworking space UR Work lands USD 30 million; and Tencent leads USD 100M financing in Twitch-like game streaming site.
LeEco’s sports subsidiary confirms $1.1B in Series B funding
Ke Jin
The HNA Group’s Caissa Travel on Tuesday announced that it will raise RMB 1.2 billion (USD 185 million) along with two other HNA Group companies for the Series B funding of LeSports, in exchange for 5.85% of its shares.
Caissa also said that LeSports got RMB 7 billion in total in its Series B funding, pushing its valuation to RMB 20.5 billion.
With a profit of RMB 417 million in 2015, only two years after the company spun off from LeEco, LeSports now dominates the sports entertainment sector.
Smart home theater provider to explore overseas and VR
Wanbin Zhang
Shenzhen-based smart home theater provider JmGO announced on Wednesday that it closed RMB 600 million (USD 92 million) in Series C financing led by Golden Brick Capital, followed by Zhongjin Qianhai Fund.
The company will use this round of funding to further explore new products and launch more production lines as well as expand their overseas business. In the future, they are planning to explore the VR sector, including using VR to project 360-degree panoramic videos. Its leading investor, Golden Brick Capital, once helped China’s search engine giant Qihoo 360 purchase Internet browser developer Opera, and will offer a hand to JmGO in exploiting the overseas market.
Hu Zhenyu and Chen Xingbo co-founded JmGO in January 2011. The company’s featured brand is the JmGO series of products, portable projectors with large-size screen displays. These products adopt advanced optical projection technology developed by Texas Instruments (TI) and use an Android user interface. Although there’s a gap between LCD TVs and JmGo series products in screen resolution ratio, JmGO does create a cinema-like experience at home.
Tencent leads USD 100M financing in Twitch-like game streaming site
Danielle Li
Chinese Twitch-like game streaming website Douyu TV announced on Tuesday that it is wrapping up a Series B financing round of USD 100M led by tech giant Tencent and followed by Chinese online game developer Zeus Interactive. Return investors from last round, Sequoia Capital China and Nanshan Capital, also contributed.
Tencent, which owns two of the largest SNS apps QQ and Wechat and its own gaming business, invested RMB 400 million (USD 61.5 million) in the financing round, according to China Renaissance, the sole financial consultant to Douyu TV.
The rumor has been swirling since the latter half of 2014, and according to a WSJ leak in last September, Tencent’s investment seems to be a move to reinforce its top spot in China’s online games sector. A slowing in Tencent’s online game business can be seen in its 2015 quarterly financial results. Before investing in Douyu, Tencent took a 20% stake in a similar site called Longzhu TV.
Baofeng acquires 3 companies with $476M
Ibo Fung
Baofeng Technologies said on Monday that it would acquire the shares and staff of television production company Straw Bear, online games developer Lidongkeji and overseas games publisher GumpTech, with an offer of RMB 3.1 billion (USD 476 million).
According to a statement by Baofeng, the company would purchase 60% of Straw Bear’s shares with RMB 1.1 billion, 100% of GumpTech’s shares with RMB 1.1 billion, and 100% of Lidongkeji’s shares with RMB 975 million in the form of shares issuance and cash payments. It would also raise a RMB three billion supporting fund to upgrade its data technology (DT)-based entertainment platform, and construct the infrastructure for a DT-based big data system.
Straw Bear was founded by Chinese singer and actor Nicky Wu in Jiangsu province in June 2014. Its main businesses include movie and television investment and production. The company will provide Baofeng with IP resources in movies and television.
Read more.
Co-working space UR Work lands $30M
Dora Zhang
UR Work, a coworking space provider, announced on Saturday that it closed Series A+ financing of RMB 200 million (USD 30.8 million), pushing its valuation close to RMB four billion.
Founded in April 2015, the company has already finished three rounds of financing in less than a year from VCs that include Sequoia Capital, ZhenFund, Gopher Asset Management, Hanfor and Yirun Investment.
The company provides working spaces and related services for startups. UR Work founder Mao Daqing said they help entrepreneurs engage in their businesses and reduce their total spending through this business model.
Originally published at cn.allchinatech.com on March 20, 2016.
