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SiliconDragonventures.com       @SiliconDragon    May 1, 2017     
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Ride Sharing Madness In Beijing:  
3 Unicorns 

  Ofo founder   Joe Xia
Alibaba's Ant Financial and Didi have made a strategic investment in Chinese bike-sharing unicorn Ofo while Tencent, Temasek and several leading VC firms have backed MoBike.
Ofo's founder Dai Wei (left, above) spoke recently at the Harvard China Forum and described how his startup has grown to 10 million daily rides in China, and attracted four rounds of venture investment. 
Ofo competes with MoBike. Founder Joe Xia (right, center) spoke at the recent Silicon Dragon Beijing 2017
Wei told how Ofo has changed course several times - from a bike touring company to bike sharing on campus to finally, bike sharing city-wide to catch up with MoBike. The name Ofo comes from what its letters actually look like - cleverly, a bicycle rider.  MoBike's name brings in the mobile apps of this new bike sharing upstart.

$5.5 Billion Not Out Of Whack For Ride App Didi
Jenny Lee, GGV Who could have imagined even just five years ago that a Chinese tech startup could raise $5.5 billion in funding and compete with U.S. giants on their home turf?  Chalk one up for China's leading ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing -- the same upstart that bested Uber in China last year.  This new financing has set a record for China's fast-growth companies that have been pulling in unicorn-level amounts. 
Expect more of these stratospheric kinds of deals to emerge from China, contends Jenny Lee, managing partner at GGV Capital.  She notes that the China market opportunity is THAT big. 
Read Forbes, Didi's Billions.

CRF IPO Shanghai-based online consumer lending marketplace China Rapid Finance rang the opening bell at NYSE on China national holiday May 1 after an IPO on Friday that raised $60 million. CEO Zang Wang described the market opportunity in China: 500 million in the emerging middle class who do not have access to bank credit. CRF connects borrowers with lenders, taking a fee. The company has served 2 million borrowers and provided 15 million lenders. 

China tech giant Tencent has funded fintech startup Airwallex in Melbourne. The $17 million financing included Sequoia Capital China and MasterCard.

Cyberport
has made its first investment since launching a $26 million fund to invest in early stage startups. Lynk, a startup formed by Peggy Choi that connects experts for knowledge sharing online, got the financing nod after being incubated at Cyberport.  

An investment arm of the Times Group in India has invested $6 million in a Series A for Hong Kong-based startup Oddup, which provides data and analysis of startup financings.  Other investors include Click Ventures and 500 Startups.

Netflix content has entered China through a licensing deal with the video portal service IQiyi, run by Baidu, a stepping stone to expansion of its brand in the country.

TAIWAN
Online media startup The News Lens has raised $2 million Series B round that was lead invested by Wiskey Capital along with prior investor North Base Media as well as VC investors Walden International, Trinity Investment and Angelvest.

Read More Silicon Dragon News Here

 

Speakers Beijing 2017 Dave McClure, Rebecca
tech innovators Annie Huang
  Samsung Next SD BJ 2017