Meitu, the maker of China’s largest selfie-editing app, is launching a USD 200 million round of financing which will push its valuation to USD three billion after the round of financing is closed, according to Bloomberg.
The company will use this round of financing to expand its facial recognition and smartphone businesses. It is also planning to launch its IPO overseas this year on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a person with information on the financing plans said on Tuesday.
Founded in 2008 in the southern Chinese city of Xiamen, the company has developed many apps including photo-editing app Meitu Xiuxiu and short video app Meipai. It also launched a smartphone brand in May 2013. Among its apps, Meitu Xiuxiu had 440 million users by April 2015, Meitu’s president Mike Cai said at the company’s smartphone press conference in April 2015.
According to the company’s official website, Meitu had 1.4 billion total users, 270 million monthly active users, 52 million daily active users, and 900 million mobile devices that have one of its apps installed at the end of October 2015. The company ranked eighth among the global app developers with Tencent, Google and Facebook being the top three, according to the 2015 Q4 App Store report released by the data analysis company Sensor Tower in January 2016.
Additionally, the company finished three rounds of financing in 2014 with a cumulative amount of USD 360 million. Its VCs include IDG, Qiming Venture Partners, and Innovation Works among others. After the third round of financing, the company had a valuation of USD two billion.
(Top photo from Baidu Images.)
