China Creation leads $16m for credit evaluation specialist
China Creation Ventures, a VC firm recently launched by Wei Zhou, formerly a managing partner at KPCB China, has led a Series A round of funding worth RMB110 million ($16 million) for credit evaluation business IceKredit.
Lingfeng Capital also took part in the round, as did all the existing investors. IceKredit previously received a RMB10 million in angel funding from Yunqi Partners, FreeS Fund and Will Hunting Capital, followed by a RMB20 million pre-Series A round from Lujiazui Fund and an unnamed A-share listed company.
The company was founded in 2015 by Lingyun Gu, a machine learning and data mining expert who previously developed risk control models for ZestFinance, a US-based credit-scoring business, and co-founded Turbo Financial Group. IceKredit uses big data to provide credit evaluation services that focus on individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It employs 103 people in Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Nanjing, Changzhou and Chengdu.
IceKredit’s system comprises an anti-fraud engine, personal and company credit portraits, and a function for the restoration of missing customer contact information. The company also offers end-to-end online loan management services to banks, peer-to-peer payment platforms, consumer finance companies and micro lending institutions.
"Limited to their own operation mechanisms, traditional financial institutions respond slowly to market demands. It usually takes them several months from data acquisition to modeling, during which the market has undergone new changes. In this way, the window period for traditional financial institutions to provide risk management model service will always exist," said Lingyun Gu, founder and CEO of IceKredit, said in a statement.
Zhou formed China Creation with his ex-KPCB colleagues Xin Tang and Yu Liang. The firm raised RMB1.5 billion for its debut renminbi-denominated fund, which invests in early and growth-stage companies focusing on financial services, big data, artificial intelligence, and media and entertainment. China Creation is also raising a US dollar vehicle.
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