Online recruitment site Lagou.com announced RMB 220 million (USD 33.8 million) in Series C financing on Wednesday. The funding will go towards further expanding services to business customers.
Founded in July 2013, the company secured Series A financing of USD five million in March 2014. USD 25 million in Series B financing followed five months later, pushing the company’s valuation at the time to RMB 800 million.
Xu Dandan, Lagou’s CEO, said that their top priority for 2016 is to test expanding services to business customers. New services include business memberships priced at RMB 16,800 or RMB 23,800, with which employers can access extra services such as Lagou’s workshops. For some time, Lagou’s main income has come from charging employers 20% of an employee’s first month’s salary as a service fee.
Furthermore, Lagou will also expand its mobile services and will concentrate on the domestic market.
With over 110,000 registered companies and 6,000,000 individual users, Lagou has been testing the waters for its business service segment since late-2015 and has gained profits of RMB 70 million. The company projects they will have an income of RMB 200 million in 2016.
Other large players in the online recruitment business include 51job.com and Zhaopin.com, both of which have being listed in U.S. stock market.
(Top photo from Yangtse.com)