Sierra Ventures leads Series C round for China's Social Touch
Chinese social marketing services provider Social Touch has raised $10 million in Series C funding from a group of investors led by Sierra Ventures. Legend Capital and GGV Capital, which backed the company in its previous two rounds, also participated.
Rui Zhang, Social Touch's CEO, said the new funding would be invested in production development and R&D, in expectation of "explosive growth" in demand from Chinese companies for social media management, precision marketing and data mining and analysis.
Founded in 2011, Social Touch claims to have pioneered the use of social media software-as-a-service products in China. These solutions allow companies to distribute advertisements and content and launch promotions across multiple social media platforms such as Sina Weibo, offering analysis on its impact and which strategies present the best return on investment.
The company has more than 100 employees in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and works with nearly 100 brand owners, including Procter & Gamble, China Ping An, IBM and Li-Ning. This year Social Touch introduced dedicated software for small- and medium-sized enterprises and it has already attracted close to 1,000 paying customers.
"From a global perspective, social media management is increasingly important to companies and has already become a huge industry opportunity overseas. The Chinese social media market has its own unique characteristics and we have been following it closely and recognize the huge demand," said Ben Yu, a partner with Sierra Ventures, in a statement.
He added that Sierra was attracted by Social Touch's technological expertise, market knowledge, customer base and leadership team.
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