Capital Today leads $100m round for China Q&A platform Zhihu
Capital Today has led a $100 million Series D round of funding for Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer platform similar to US-based Quora.
Existing backers Tencent Holdings, Chinese search engine Sougo, Qiming Capital Partners and Sinovation Ventures also participated.
Zhihu was founded in January 2010, a little more than a year after Quora's launch in late 2009. The Chinese-language platform shares a numbers of features with its US counterpart, such as online voting, user-generated topics, and options to follow particular topics or users. It has more than 65 million registered users, with daily page views of about 18.5 million. By the end of 2016, about six million questions, 23 million answers and 1.5 million feature articles were posted on the platform.
In addition to Q&A sessions, Zhihu issues daily and weekly newsletters and hosts round table activities. In May 2016, the company launched its first paid service - Zhihu Live - via mobile app in an effort to monetize its user base. Combining live streaming and knowledge sharing, Zhihu Live allows professionals to express their views on a given topic or question raised by paying audiences. About 1,500 live sessions have been held by 737 speakers so far. Average attendence was 120,000, while average revenue came to RMB190,000 ($27,460).
"We have followed Zhihu for more than one year. It was a pity that we missed the opportunity to invest in Zhihu's Series C round. Now we're very excited by being a part of the company," said Kathy Xu, founder and managing partner of Capital Today, according to a Tencent QQ News report. "Capital Today manages an evergreen fund with a fund life of 28 years. We are patient in sourcing good companies with a view to holding investments for a long time."
Zhihu received angel funding from Sinovation, previously known as Innovation Works, in 2011, and later Qiming provided a Series A round worth approximately $10 million. In 2014, SAIF Partners led a $22 million Series B round, followed by a $55 million Series C round led by Tencent and Sougo. The new capital will be used to expand the business, providing services to more middle-class consumers and institutions.
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