Fenda, a questions and answers voice app, announced in Beijing on Monday that it had landed USD 25 million in Series A financing, valuing Fenda at USD 100 million.
Sequoia Capital China and Vision Capital led this financing round. They were followed by investment from Prometheus Capital, an investment company owned by Web Celeb Wang Sicong, and investment from a funding platform called Luoji Siwei, itself a creation of another Chinese web celeb.
The founder of Fenda, Ji Xiaohua, said at a press conference on Monday that these funds will be used to combine Fenda with its parent platform Zaihang, a knowledge and skills sharing platform.
The voice app Fenda came online in May 2016. A user can set his own price for answering questions in fields he is good at, and others can ask him questions and pay for the answer. Additionally, users can pay to listen to other questions and answers in the app.
According to Ji, Fenda now has over 10 million users, one million of whom are paying users. The total number of transactions has surpassed RMB 18 million (USD 2.7 million).
Web celeb Wang Sicong, the son of Chinese real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin, earned RMB 8,368 for one single question he answered in Fenda: RMB 3,000 for his question price and RMB 5,368 from the listeners’ RMB 11,930, a sum of money that was split between Wang, the questioner and Fenda. According to a report by news website culture.gmw.cn, Wang earned RMB 230,000 on his first day in Fenda.
A number of Chinese actors/actresses, singers and web celebrities have joined Fenda as answerers, something which contributed to Fenda’s cultural prominence. Fenda said they were receiving more questions and answers in a wider range of specific fields.
Zaihang was founded in March 2015. It provides customized knowledge and skills services online and offline. It completed its pre-Series A financing from investors, including a co-founder of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.
(Top photo is screen shot from fd.zaih.com)
A correction was made that Fenda came online in May 2016.
