China vacation rental site raises $100m from VC investors

The investment was confirmed by Jun Luo, the company's CEO, on his Sina Weibo micoblog. Existing VC backers Lightspeed China Partners, GGV Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, CDH Investments and CBC Capital all participated, plus strategic players HomeAway and Ctrip. China Renaissance Capital is the sole new investor.

Much like Homeaway and Airbnb, Tujia operates a platform on which owners can post properties to be hired out as vacation or business rentals. It takes a commission off the top of the rental price. There are currently more than 80,000 properties listed on the platform, primarily in China but also in some overseas markets.

However, the company differs from its US-based counterparts in that there is a property management business bolted on to its website. For example, an individual with a holiday home in Sanya can appoint Tujia to maintain and rent out the property, with the company setting the price and splitting the revenue with the landlord.

In many cases, the owner doesn't list the property at all but relies on a local manager who posts it on Tujia in order to attract more custom.

Lightspeed came across Tujia in late 2011 while looking for investments in the travel and tourism space. Tujia's founders already had start-up pedigree. Luo, was formerly joint CEO of NASDAQ-listed China Real Estate Information, while Melissa Yang used to be CTO of Escapia, a US vacation rental platform bought by HomeAway.

Thanks to their connections, Ctrip and HomeAway both participated as in the Series A round in early 2012. This round, worth more than $10 million, was led by Lightspeed, with CDH also participating. A second round followed 12 months later, taking the total raised to $64 million. The existing investors were joined by GGV, Qiming and CBC.

As of last year, Tujia was said to be generating meaningful revenue but has yet to turn profitable. The company has been "in growth mode," consolidating its position as market leader and improving customer service the current priorities.

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• Topics
• Venture
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Real estate
• China
• TMT
• Real estate
• Consumer
• Venture
• Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Qiming Venture Partners
• GGV Capital
• CDH Investments Management
• CBC Partners / CBC Capital