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.
“Positioning as mini projectors, JmGO products offer large-size screen display, aiming to bring users an intuitive visual experience,” said Chen Xingbo, co-founder of the company.
Chen added that most domestic video viewers are used to watching video programs on mobile devices rather than on TV, which is inconvenient to carry around. JmGO is a solution for this issue.
“The only thing you need to do is to switch on a JmGO device facing a wall, then enjoy it. You can even put the device on your bed and let the video move on your ceiling,” said Chen.
The company has cooperated with iQIYI, a leading Chinese video provider, as a content provider. All their devices are pre-loaded with the iQIYI app, giving users free rein to watch all types of content provided by iQIYI. The company has also purchased the copyright of popular films that are in season, making it possible for users to watch cinema movies at home.
“Competition between companies focuses on their products. We get to blaze new trails for our products,” said Hu Zhenyu. “It doesn’t matter who will become our rivals.”
As of now the company has been widely favored by the market, and has finished several rounds of funding. It landed RMB 60 million in Series A financing from IDG and Star VC in December 2014, and received RMB 200 million in Series B funding from Songhe Capital and SkyChee Ventures in July 2015.
(Top photo from Jmgo.com)
