Don’t miss out these headlines for the week: Beauty tech startup co-founded by Zhang Ziyi gets angel funding; AI-based health data platform iCarbonX lands over USD 100 M; and Pregnancy app set to capitalize on China’s two-child policy.
Beauty tech startup co-founded by Zhang Ziyi gets angel funding
Yvonne Lek
Meilice, a Shenzhen-based beauty company, announced that it has received tens of millions of RMB in angel investment on Wednesday.
The company’s latest round of financing comes from Plum Ventures’ Wu Shichun, Chinese film actress Zhang Ziyi, and angel investors Xu Yingjian and Huang Jie.
Founded in June 2015, the company is a high-tech enterprise that covers software, hardware and big data.
Health management app receives USD 15 M to expand its user base
Dora Zhang
A Chinese health management app called More has completed a Series A round of financing worth RMB 100 million (USD 15.4 million) in the first quarter of 2016, online medical news portal vcbeat.net reported on Wednesday.
The company will use this round of financing to integrate its services with more companies in order to enlarge its user base.
This round of financing was led by Ronghui Capital, the VC arm of Sunshine Insurance Group. Gao Hang, the executive director of Ronghui Capital, explained why they made this investment. He said Sunshine Insurance Group will share its clients’ data with the app and provide its clients with health services from the app.
Live video education site gets funded by 2 US-listed companies
Jack Niu
Live streaming education website Empower Education Online (EEO) announced on Sunday that it has received a strategic investment from two US-listed education companies, ATA and TAL Education Group.
ATA invested RMB 32.5 million, but the amount from TAL has not been disclosed.
Small class sizes will be the next hotspot in the online education scene, and education streaming platforms can meet this trend, Song Junbo, the founder of EEO, told Jiemodiu, an online platform focused on education.
AI-based health data platform iCarbonX lands over USD 100 M
Wanbin Zhang
Less than six months after it was founded, Shenzhen-based health data platform iCarbonX has completed a Series A financing round of nearly RMB 1 billion (more than USD 100 million), which has pushed its market valuation to RMB 65 billion, Chinese news portal NetEase reported on Tuesday.
The main investors in the latest round include Tencent and VCANBIO Cell & Gene Engineering Corp., Ltd. Besides providing financial support, the investors will also sign strategic partnerships with iCarbonX.
iCarbonX was founded in October by the former CEO of the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), Wang Jun, who is now iCarbonX’s CEO. He hopes to establish an AI-based health data platform to offer health management services across the world.
Pregnancy app set to capitalize on China’s two-child policy
Dora Zhang
iBaby, an app for pregnant women, disclosed that it recently completed a round of Series A financing worth RMB tens of millions.
Lu Guotao, CEO and founder of iBaby, said this round of financing will be used to upgrade content and for promoting to users, the Chinese tech blog 36Kr reported on Monday.
Launched in April 2015, iBaby is a mobile medical O2O platform aimed at helping pregnant women by providing them with consultation services, open courses and videos about pregnancy. Pregnant women can make inquiries with doctors that have registered on the app pertaining to their condition. They can send pictures and describe their condition to the doctors. If the women need to see a doctor, those doctors on the app can provide services offline.
Beijing-based VR startup lands a USD 1.5 M angel investment
Eric Sun
Phantom VR, a newly-established VR (virtual reality) game developer based in Beijing, received almost RMB ten million (USD 1.5 million) in angel round financing, NetEase’s tech channel reported on Friday.
This round of funding was led by investment fund Hejun Capital and VR platform provider Magical World, followed by online game developer TipCat Interactive.
Founded last November, Phantom VR is committed to the research and development of games as well as the construction of offline VR venues. The company mainly focuses on the business to business (B2B) gaming market, providing VR content and technical support to offline VR experience shops. Phantom VR makes a profit mainly through software and hardware sales. The company hopes to build a game player platform and expand their business to individual VR users in the future.
(Top Photo from tv.yayawan.com.)
