Sequoia leads $100m Series C for China's Kuaidian
Kuaidian, a Chinese interactive content provider, has raised close to $100 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital China. Existing investors GGV Capital and Morningside Venture Capital re-upped.
The company launched in 2017 with a selection of dialogue-style novels. These comprise text-message style conversations with limited input from a narrator. This delivery style - plus a co-writing function - has lowered the threshold for user-generated content (UGC) in China, while appealing to a younger demographic.
Kuaidian claims that 20% of its readers are also UGC providers while 50% of readers interact with others through the platform. This has allowed the company to accumulate a lot of content.
Starting in 2018, it expanded into audio and video UGC based on these novels. Kuaidian targets content that is already popular among readers and invites users to take on different roles in the audio versions. Around 30,000 short plays have also been created on the platform.
Film and television content will come next. The company wants to disrupt the traditional production chain by moving script creation, casting, editing and distribution online. It plans to develop 20-30 in-house dramas of more than 10 episodes each.
Kuaidian started to commercialize its business in 2019 through advertising and value-added member service. Cash flow is now around RMB10 million per month. According to CEO Rui Zhang, leading writers on the platform earn RMB500,000-600,000 per year, while as many as 20,000 novels are updated each day.
DCM Ventures led a Series B round of undisclosed size in 2018.
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