ikongjian
Founder: Chen Wei
Founded in: 2014
Financing status: RMB 216 million (USD 32 million) Series C round in 2017
O2O home renovation platform ikongjian on Wednesday received USD 32 million for its Series C financing round to expand its marketing plans.
ikongjian is an online-to-offline (O2O) home renovation platform that provides cheap home renovation services with a promise to complete the job fast. It builds its own design team, and recruit its own team members instead of signing contracts with third party design teams when there are job orders.
The company aims to standardize the home renovation process, and this includes the standardization of the renovation process, delivery and services. The company offers a price of RMB 699 (USD 103) per square meter, and the whole design process can be done in an average time of 20 days.
Founded in 2014 in Beijing, its home renovation services cover 24 cities in China including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. According to ikongjian CEO Chen Wei, it finished 12,000 orders in 2016, which contributed to a turnover that exceeded RMB 1 billion.
ikongjian previously received funding from Shunwei Capital, which is held by Xiaomi founder Lei Jun. This Series C financing round was led by Gome Fund. The capital will be used to build new renovation services and standards. At the same time, the company will invest more on offline marketing to gain new customers, which seems to be cheaper than acquiring new customers online.
Instant messaging cloud service platform RongCloud receives USD 14.7 million for Series B
RongCloud
Founder: Han Ying
Founded in: 2014
Financing status: RMB 100 million (USD 14.7 million) Series B round in 2017
Instant messaging cloud service platform RongCloud on Wednesday received USD 14.7 million for its Series B financing round to fund its global expansion plans.
RongCloud is an instant messaging cloud platform that provides business partners with instant communication cloud technology support.
RongCloud’s main businesses can be categorized into four sectors. First, it provides social intercourse support for apps such as real-time message push, voice and video communication, picture messages, and so on.
Second, for its partners that provide live streaming services, its cloud service platform enables an unlimited number of people to watch live streaming shows online, as well as chat room management support.
Next, RongCloud provides business customers with instant messaging (IM) services for communication within enterprises, which also combines an office system that enables employees to send and accept documents.
Last of all, its provides some e-commerce customers with customer service robots which helps them improve service efficiency and reduce labor cost.
Founded in 2014 in Beijing, its services have covered 1.6 billion users across China, with 55 million of them being active daily users. Its business partners come mainly from O2O services, games, e-commerce, videos, education, health, finance, and offices.
This Series C financing round was led by GP Capital, with Tianxing Capital and some other venture capital firms participating as investors. The company plans to use the fund for global expansion, as well as the investment in the development of new technologies.
(Top photo from 58pic.com)