Rocket Internet-backed online retailer Zalora announced that it just secured a USD100 million round of funding through its German holding company from Summit Partners, Investment AB Kinnevik, Verlinvest and Tengelmann Group. Two months ago the company announced EURO 20 million funding from Tengelmann. The investment will be used to to scale up operations and extend its current portfolio of local [...]
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Online Retailor ZALORA Announces US$100 million New Funding
Qihoo Partners with Alibaba’s Etao on Shopping Search
Qihoo’s search service launched another vertical search, shopping search, under its So.com. Apparently it partners with Alibaba’s shopping search, Etao.com as its address reads 360.etao.com. All the search results are the same with those shown on Etao.com, unlike other channels of So.com that partner with several content providers and prioritize their content in the search [...]
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Hujiang VP on Online Education Monetization in China: Users and Quality Content are Keys
Founded in 2001, Hujiang is one of the few Chinese e-learning sites that have turned profits. Xu Hua, VP of Hujiang shared his thoughts on the trend of online education in China in a recent interview. (in Chinese) He thinks there are three monetization approaches for online education — the same with those for any online [...]
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Alibaba’s Financial Arm Made 1.1 million Loans to Online Retailers in Q1 2013
In the first quarter of 2013, 25 thousand online retailers on Taobao and Tmall received loans, with an average of 11 thousand yuan per case, from Alifinance, the financial arm under Alibaba Group, according to a report by Alifinance (in Chinese). That totals 1.1 million loans, 50% increase year-over-year, and 12 billion yuan in worth. It [...]
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Sohu’s Charles Zhang is Back with All the Hype
It’d been a long while before Sohu drew public attention again. Charles Zhang, founder and CEO of the company, said he became depressed around 2010 and kind of “retreated”. He would expect Sohu Weibo to become a hit if he didn’t left from the frontstage back then, he said so in a recent interview. Now there’s [...]
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Chinese MIIT Clears Policy on Mobile Virtual Network Operator
As expected, Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced the policy on mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) on May 17. Qualified companies can apply for it by July 1, 2014 and a trial period will end by the end of 2015. A qualified applicant must be a company whose biggest share holder is a mainland [...]
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Airizu, the Samwer Brothers-backed Airbnb Clone,Has Reportedly Laid off 80% Employees, Funding Cut off
It is reported that Airizu, founded in 2011 as one of the earliest Airbnb clones in China, is in a pickle now. It is said that Rocket Internet who takes controlling stake in it has cut off funding, and almost 80% of the Arizu team have been laid off. The remaining 30-staff team has been running without a CEO [...]
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Baidu Integrates PC & Mobile Advertising Systems
Baidu will release the integrated advertising system for both PC and mobile search marketing this weekend so that customers only need to manage one account. Customers can put their ads on different screens as they wish. Bidding prices can be set different on the two platforms and customers can change the budget ratios between the two. Baidu [...]
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One Third of Sina Weibo’s Ad Revenue Generated from Mobile in Q1 2013
As of Q1 2013 76.5% of Sina Weibo users logged in through mobile devices and 34% of ad revenue was from mobile, up from 25% quarter-over-quarter, disclosed Sina management on the earnings conference call today. Sina Weibo recorded $18.8 million in advertising and $11.1 million in value-added services; of the latter $2 million is from membership subscriptions [...]
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More Chinese Startups Are Moving to Second-tier Cities
Chuangtouquan (ctquan), a startup investing network, released a report that shows second-tier Chinese cities are hosting more startups in terms of percentage. In 2011, 84% of Chinese startups were located in first-tier cities including Beijing, shanghai and Guangzhou. The rate decreased to 77% in 2012. Second-tier cities including Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan became the new [...]
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