Investors commit $850m to China’s Dianping
Dianping, one of China’s most popular sites for restaurant reviews and group-buying services, has received a $850 million round of investment that values the start-up at $4.05 billion.
Tencent Holdings is the biggest investor in this round, AVCJ understands. Other participants include Chinese smart phone maker Xiaomi, private equity firm FountainVest Partners, Singapore's Temasek Holdings, Chinese conglomerates Wanda Group and Fosun Group.
The company was co-founded by Zhang Tao in 2003. In addition to offering listings and independent restaurant reviews, it provides group-buying, e-membership and restaurant reservation services, as well as several other online-to-offline services.
Sequoia Capital provided Dianping's Series A round worth $1 million in 2006, having found out about the company because Sequoia employees were using it. Google led a second round in 2007, but the big pay-off came three years ago when TrustBridge Partners led a $100 million Series C round, which also featured Lightspeed Venture Partners, Qiming Venture Partners and Sequoia.
As of year-end 2014, Dianping had more than 190 million monthly active users, over 60 million reviews, and more than 12 million local business listings covering approximately 2,300 cities across China. It also covers several overseas markets. Over 85% of its 12 billion monthly page views are from mobile devices and Dianping mobile apps have 200 million accumulated unique users.
Dianping's latest fundraising round is part of a broader battle for customers among three of China's internet giants Tencent, Alibaba Group and Baidu. In February last year, Tencent paid an undisclosed sum for a 20% stake in Dianping. Dianping was soon after incorporated its services into Tencent's instant messaging app WeChat.
Last month, one of Dianping's competitors, Alibaba-backed Meituan.com, said it raised $700 million in its latest round of financing that valued the four-year-old company at $7 billion.
In 2013, Baidu acquired a majority stake in the group-buying services provider Nuomi.
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