Mobile news aggregator Yidian Zixun receives USD 100M for Series E
Yidian Zixun
Founder: Zheng Chaohui
Founded in: 2013
Financing status: RMB 661 million (USD 100 million) for Series E financing in 2017
Mobile news aggregator Yidian Zixun received USD 100 million for Series E on October 17 to solidify its content system.
Yidian Zixun is an interest-oriented mobile news aggregator with search and recommendation technologies to provide its users with personalized content. The company makes profiles for its users based on big data and other technologies to define their interest. It acquires professionals to produce content, and distribute that content to users based on their interests. Moreover, it rewards professionals whose content attracts users most and contributes revenue. Additionally, it builds its own database for marketing based on users’ interest, such as matching users with advertisements more accurately.
Founded in 2013 in Beijing, it has attracted more than 30 million users in China. Ren Xugang, one of the founders of Yidian Zixun, previously work for Baidu and held a post as the VP of Baidu. Content distribution has always been an important part of Baidu and other companies that operate search engines.
This new financing round was from an undisclosed group of investors. It has received financing funding from Xiaomi, OPPO and others. The capital will be used to increase the quota for content producers, solidify the distribution channels of its content, as well as invest in the research and development of new products.
Yidian Zixun’s rival, news aggregator giant Toutiao, is backed by Sequoia Capital and CCB International. This August it secured its latest USD 2 billion financing at a valuation of over USD 20 billion.
Online computer rental startup Edianzu receives USD 18M for Series B
Edianzu
Founder: Ji Pengcheng
Founded in: 2015
Financing status: RMB 120 million (USD 18 million) for Series B financing in 2017
Online computer rental startup Edianzu received USD 18 million for Series B on October 18 to set more offline outlets in new cities.
Edianzu is an online computer rental startup that provides IT, office desktop, and office equipment rental services for small and medium-sized enterprises, so that they can focus on their core business by saving costs on IT equipment. The company builds warehouses and refurbished factories in order to make sure all of its IT equipment performs well and with operational capability. Moreover, it can now provide enterprises with one-stop IT services, including computer selection and purchases, IT support, maintenance, and so on.
Founded in 2015 in Beijing, its services cover more than 1200 cities in China, with partnerships with over 20,000 enterprises. By now, over 200,000 pieces of IT equipment are available for rental on its platform. Meanwhile, it has subsidiaries in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Chengdu, as well as warehouses. Its customers include Jiayuan.com International Ltd., China’s largest online dating platform, and Litsoft, an IT services company under Legend Holdings.
Edianzu previously secured financing fundings from Legend Holdings. This Series B financing round was led by existing investors, including Matrix Partners China, Shunwei Capital, Lakala and Angel Plus. The company plans to use the funds to launch more offline outlets to promoting its computer rental services in more cities, as well as expand its services range to provide enterprises with a whole IT solution.
(Top photo from 699pic.com)