Co-working space startup UrWork receives USD 29.4 million financing
UrWork
Founder: Mao Daqing
Founded in: 2015
Financing status: RMB 200 million (USD 29.4 million) financing in 2017
Co-working space startup UrWork on Tuesday received USD 29.4 million financing to enrich its selection of services for URWork customers.
UrWork is a co-working space startup that offers one-stop servicing solutions for startups of sizes large and small, as well as individuals. UrWork advocates building environment friendly working spaces, which is also in line with national economic development.
It mainly establishes environment friendly working spaces in city centers to acquire new customers easily. It provides customers with integrated multi-functional services and modern office facilities. Not only is UrWork a co-working space, but it also combines shared working spaces with other functional services such as human resources, business advisory, marketing, medical, sports, travel, and financial services.
Founded in 2015 in Beijing, UrWork’s services cover over 78 locations across 20 cities worldwide including Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, and London. Today, it offers services for over 3,000 enterprises and over 30,000 individual members.
UrWork closed six rounds of funding in total, which amounts to RMB 1.2 billion (USD 175 million) since its launch in 2015. Some existing investors include Sequoia Capital, ZhenFund, and Sinovation Ventures. This new financing round was from Aikang Group, which has over 20 years of experience investing in healthcare, finance, hospitality and real estate. The capital will be used to improve the services offered at UrWork, as well as launching new co-working spaces in new cities.
WeChat education platform Qing Class receives USD 4.9 million for Series A
Qing Class
Founder: Xiao Yiqun
Founded in: 2015
Financing status: RMB 33 million (USD 4.9 million) Series A round in 2017
WeChat education platform Qing Class on Wednesday received USD 4.9 million for its Series A financing round to invest in technology to optimize its education platform.
Qing Class is an education platform on WeChat that provides users with practical English courses based on interest. Its English courses include vocabulary, grammar, speaking, and writing. It mainly builds its education courses on WeChat, offering learning materials with pictures, text and voice. Moreover, users can make full use of their time easily in this way, which can greatly improve their learning efficiency.
Founded in Beijing in 2015, Qing Class has now over 1 million users with more than 100,000 of them paying for course subscriptions. It provides users with one-to-many courses, which is priced between RMB 300 to 500. Its one-on-one courses cost an average of RMB 3,500. In addition, it has a “Scholarship Program” that allows users to refund their tuition fees after learning on its platform for 30 days. If they continue learning on its platform for 100 days, they can get additional rewards. According to the company, this has proven to be a good way to promote its platform, as well as gain new users.
This Series A financing round was led by Matrix Partners China, with Tencent Co-working Space also participating as an investor. Qing Class plans to use the fund to invest more on technology to improve user experience on its platform, as well as introduce new courses.
(Top photo from 58pic.com)
