Standard Chartered, CFF lead $207m round for China’s Dianrong

Shanghai-listed Bohai Leasing and exiting investors also participated.

"Standard Chartered rarely invests in early-stage companies. We generally focus on investing in companies at the growth and late stages. Dianrong is an exception," Wei Zhu, managing director and Greater China head for Standard Chartered Private Equity, said in a statement.

Dianrong was launched in March 2013 by Soul Htite, a former Oracle executive who co-founded US-based P2P lending service Lending Club, and Yuhang Guo, an intellectual property lawyer. Htite remains a technology advisor to Lending Club and sits on its advisory board.

The platform connects individual lenders with small-scale borrowers, essentially meeting the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises that don't qualify for bank financing. It enables borrowers to get loans below market rates, and lenders can earn returns above those available on traditional fixed-income investments.

Dianrong's previous round, which closed in January, was from Tiger Global Management. Prior to that, the firm raised institutional rounds from Northern Light Venture Capital and Hong Kong financial institution Sun Hung Kai & Co. Francis Leung, Greater China chairman at CVC Capital Partners, has also invested in a personal capacity and joined the company's board last November. Linear Ventures provided seed capital for the firm.

Htite told AVCJ in a previous interview that Dianrong differs from many Chinese P2P practitioners due to their strong risk control, with several dimensions of analysis conducted to determine a borrower's probability of default.

There were 600 P2P lending sites in China at the end of 2013, up from 240 in 2012 and 20 in 2011. As of June 2014, there were 1,263. Transaction volume reached RMB10 billion in the first half of the year - close to the full-year total for 2013 - according to the Internet Society of China.

Four months ago, industry peer Jimubox raised $84 million in a Series C round led by South African-based Investec Bank, with participation from Haitong Kaiyuan, a PE arm of Haitong Securities.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Venture
• Financials
• Expansion
• China
• TMT
• Financial Services
• Venture
• Northern Light Venture Capital
• Tiger Global Management
• Growth capital