[April 14, 2009] Kaixin001.com Closes Fundraising Round II, Sources Say Tweet BEIJING, Apr 14, 2009 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- Kaixin001.com, a popular social networking site (SNS) based in Beijing, has closed its second round of fundraising recently, disclosed people in the know. This time, the site is likely to snatch USD 20 million from venture capital investors led by its existing investor Northern Light Venture Capital (Northern Light), according to one person. Notably, Qiming Weichuang Investment Consulting (Shanghai) Company Limited (Qiming Venture Partners), a venture capital firm based in Shanghai, has made a capital injection into the Beijing company, added the person. Previously, there were widespread reports that Ceyuan Ventures was likely to join Northern Light in investing in Kaixin001.com in the latter's new round of financing. However, JP Gan, managing director for Qiming Venture Partners, declined to make a comment on the reported capital injection. Qiming Venture Partners said it would continue its focus on outstanding companies in the Internet industry this year. The Shanghai venture capital firm earlier has pumped money into a group of domestic Internet companies like T4GAME, Jiayuan.com, and PPStream.com. Previously, some market observers believed that Kaixin001.com was operating a rather "risky" business with "significantly high" costs, just like players in the Chinese online video sharing industry. "With a large expense on bandwidth, the SNS is eager to enlarge its user base but at the same time, tentative when making investments," pointed out a market observer. Friends for Sale and Parking War, two popular SNS games launched by Kaixin001.com, were in fact the Chinese versions of the sparkling products rolled out by SNS bellwether facebook.com. Some market observers, on the other hand, are still optimistic about Kaixin001.com's business prospect. It is not difficult for an Internet company to come up with a profitable business model after seeing a robust traffic, said an insider, noting that the so-called "risky" model is somewhat exaggerated. Notably, Kaixin001.com ranked second among all the Internet companies in the country in terms of search traffic in the 13th week of 2009, beating its cross-town archival Xiaonei.com, according to statistics unveiled by a Chinese-language information search tracker. Kaixin001.com is witnessing increasing advertisers after closing its second round of fundraising, disclosed sources familiar with the matter, adding that the site charges advertisers for advertising services at its website based on different models. The Beijing company, which secured USD 4-5 million from Northern Light in the previous round of financing last September, was evaluated at roughly USD 100 million before the new round of fundraising was initiated. (USD 1 = CNY 6.83) Source: dycj.ynet.com (April 14, 2009) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]