KiKa Tech, a Chinese company whose keyboard app targets overseas markets, has amassed RMB 220 million (USD 33 million) in a round of Series B+ funding, now valued at RMB 1,818 million (USD 272 million), according to TechNode.
The majority of the investment is from new investor Cheetah Mobile, a leading mobile internet company, along with existing investor game company Zeus Entertainment. Zeus Entertainment made this investment through its subsidiary companies.
The new capital will be used to expand to overseas markets, especially that of the United States, India, Brazil, and Taiwan.
It is noteworthy that, KiKa Tech co-founder Zhou Li also co-founded Wandoujia, which was confirmed to have been acquired by Alibaba on Tuesday.
KiKa Keyboard is designed to be fun. As we have covered before, this app provides a slew of choices including more than 1600 emojis and emoticons, trendy GIFs, stickers and customizable layouts, fonts and themes.
This iOS and Android available app also supports more than 70 languages. Bashkir – an obscure language from the Ural Mountains in Russia, spoken by a few million people – cannot be found in normal smartphones, but it is supported by KiKa. With this app, Bashkir speaking people don’t have to use the slightly different Russian keyboard any longer.
Founded in 2014, KiKa has attracted 150 million users, with daily active users of 24 million and daily usage time of over 50 minutes. Bill Hu, Founder and CEO of KiKa Tech, had told AllChinaTech that KiKa had taken as much as a 60% share of the third-party input method market in America.
(Top photo from Baidu Images)