Chinese cloud-based photo agency raises $14m

The start-up was initially a photography studio specializing in family portraits. To improve efficiency, it developed a system that connects photographers, retouchers, and outlets.

Since 2015, VPhoto has shifted focus to serve enterprise customers. It claims to have more than 100,000 corporate clients including Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings, Huawei Technologies and Paris Fashion Week. They are served by a network of over 5,000 contract photographers and retouchers.

When an enterprise client hires VPhoto to cover an event, its photographers transfer their images to the cloud instantaneously and the editing process can be completed within five minutes. For video projects, the process takes one hour.

“You can have your ‘blockbuster’ in five minutes, share it via WeChat Moments, and this sharing can create marketing effect like a virus,” said Yumin Cao, founder of the company. VPhoto's annual revenue has reached RMB100 million, up 300% year-on-year. Its photographers have taken more than 80 million pictures have been viewed by 50 million users across 204 countries and regions.

Zhonghong Fu, a partner at Fortune Capital, believes that VPhoto has a unique competitive advantage in covering commercial events and live performances. At the same time, the photographs and videos it is accumulating represent a valuable source of user data.

The company has now raised RMB200 million across seven rounds of funding. The proceeds from the new round will be used to improve cloud computing capacity and operations management.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Technology
• TMT
• Shenzhen Fortune Venture Capital