China's Snowball Finance raises $120m Series D
Snowball Finance, a Chinese online financial information platform that subsequently expanded into asset management, has raised $120 million in a Series D round of funding led by Ant Financial, Alibaba Group’s financial services affiliate.
The company did not name any other investors. Its previous round came in 2014 when social networking platform committed $40 million alongside Morningside Ventures. A year earlier it received $10 million in Series B funding from Morningside and Sequoia Capital China, the latter having led the Series A in 2011.
Snowball was founded in 2011 by Simon Fang, former editor-in-chief at NetEase, a Chinese online services business that offers a combination of news and information content, email and messaging, and games. It started out as a website that allowed individual investors to exchange information on US, Hong Kong and Chinese equities, as well as bonds, mutual fund, and trust products.
The Snowball community generates 200,000 discussions per day and boasts up to 12 million monthly active users. The company cooperates with domestic and foreign securities exchanges to deliver real-time market data, and in the past year, it has introduced advanced international trading options such as one-click transactions and US stock options.
Having transitioned from information provider to broker, enabling stock trading through its website and apps, Snowball launched a series of fund investment portfolios tailored to different risk profiles. Its Egg Roll Fund supports subscriptions to more than 4,500 public equities funds and single stocks. The company has also entered the private markets space, completing more than 200 private placements and launching a PE fund-of-funds product for high net worth investors.
Fang, who continues to serve as Snowball’s CEO, said in a statement that the new capital would mainly be used for product development, strengthening the teams responsible for community interaction and trading systems, and improving user experience. Ant Financial added that it would work with the company in areas such as wealth management and investor services.
China Renaissance acted as the exclusive financial advisor for Snowball’s Series D round.
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