Tencent, Tiger Global lead $350m round for China mobile shopping app

Of the total amount, Tencent committed $145 million for a 10% stake, the company said via its official Weibo microblog account.

Lei Jun, a Chinese super angel investor and co-founder of smart phone manufacturer Xiaomi, provided seed funding for Koudai in 2010. In 2011, the companY raised $12 million in Series A funding from Chengwei Ventures and Matrix Partners. This was followed by Series B round of undisclosed size from Warburg Pincus. 

Koudai is a mobile-focused shopping marketplace that let merchants sell directly to consumers. It also offers shopping tips, fashion-matching and special sales information. In addition, it has integrated Tencent Holdings' instant-messaging app WeChat into the platform, enabling retailers to set up accounts and use the service to market products.

As of September, over 12 million retailers across 172 countries had listed items through Koudai WeChat platform. Koudai currently has 83 million unique visitors per month, with total sales volume of about RMB 15 billion ($2.45 billion).

The company plans to use the new capital to boost its online traffic on WeChat. Koudai and Tencent's cooperation could potentially pose a direct threat to Alibaba Group's e-commerce sites Taobao and TMall.

H Capital was set up by Xiaohong Chen, ex-China managing partner at Tiger Global, while VY is led by Alexander Tamas, previously of DST Advisors.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Venture
• Venture
• e-commerce
• China
• TMT
• Consumer
• Tencent
• Tiger Global Management