Tencent invests $125m in Chinese online comic platform

Before founding Kuaikanmanhua in 2014, Anni Chen rose to prominence as a blogger with the monicker Great Anni. She posted cartoons on Sina's Weibo platform based on her daily life as a university undergraduate. This led to the launch of Kuaikanmanhua as a platform for other artists to publish original work.

From the outset, the company positioned itself as a channel for domestic comic works, rather than importing intellectual property from overseas. According to a report from Guduo Media, 17 out the 20 most popular online comics in 2018 were created in Kuaikanmanhua.

Chen wants to develop the platform not only as a content provider but also as an online community for young people. Kuaikanmanhua has more than 200 million users, of which 40 million are monthly active users. Half of the monthly active users were born after 2000.

In an internal letter announcing the Tencent investment, Chen described Kuaikanmanhua as a technology company because its largest department is R&D, which employs 228 people. The new capital will be channeled into this area. Technology initiatives include using data analysis to produce customer-friendly content and to recommend content to individual users. Recruitment is also a priority for Kuaikanmanhua in the second half of this year.

Sequoia Capital China was the earliest investor in the company, providing a $3 million Series A round in 2015. It was joined by Beijing Kunlun Tech in a RMB100 Series B in 2016. In 2017, Kuaikanmanhua secured a RMB250 million Series C led by Tiantu Capital and featuring ByteDance and Sequoia, among others. Later the same year, Coatue Management led a $177 million Series D round. CMC Captial Partners and Xianghe Capital also participated.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• TMT
• Sequoia Capital
• Tiantu Capital
• Coatue Management
• Tencent