Recent news related to Meridian Capital China
“www.kaistart.com” announced 33.50 million yuan Series A financing, dedicated to creating life interest-based fan social networking matrix
(“Wealthy Pig”, pictured above, is a modern art project initiated by Zuoxiao Zuzhou on “www.kaistart.com”)
Crowd-funding website “www.kaistart.com” announced to have completed Series A investment totaling 33.50 million yuan, with 6 institution investors including Meridian Capital, Yinbaodian Capital, Jiuhui Capital, and Zhejiang Cultive Group. Counting in 3 institutions (Shuchuang Venture Capital, Tunlan Venture Capital and Zhejiang Cultive Holding Group) in the angel series investment, www.kaistart.com has attracted investment from 9 institutions within 9 months.
In addition, some celebrities stood out for other projects: Wang Shi, Chen Kun, and Yang Lan acted as spokesperson for Mount Everest documentary; Lee Kai-fu and Han Han contributed money to support the “Wealthy Pig” art work by Zuoxiao Zhuzhou; actor Yuan Hong became honorary producer of Kernovel APP.
Xu Jianjun, founder of the company and also a senior media insider, defined www.kaistart.com as the “The Voice of China” stage in the Internet business startup circle: “The mission of ’www.kaistart.com’ is to find such a large group of daring people with peculiar individuality, and give their ideas the opportunity of fulfillment in real life, each person wishing to become protagonist deserves a beam of light.”
According to the company, www.kaistart.com has accumulated more than two million users, with daily average PV 1.50 million, and daily average UV over 400,000, the number of fee-paying users is around 30000. www.kaistart.com tries hard to avoid deviation, so as to become e-commerce “pre-sale” platform. Xu Jianjun and two of his former colleagues at Hangzhou Xingbao Daily, plus another media insider Zuo Zhijian from the “21st Century Business Herald” who shared their vision together formed the earliest editorial team, starting from WeChat public number “Kaishiba”, they tried to continually generate 100000 + reading articles in life interest category, then the traffic of these articles are directed to those carefully selected crowd-funding with story scripts. According to Xu Jianjun, the seed users taking part in crowd-funding came from the vast WeChat fan groups.
From the initiator’s subjective and individualized perspective, through text, photo, and video, the editorial team of www.kaistart.com displayed each project in fine detail, hoping readers could acknowledge supporters of the initiator, create strong vicarious experience. Xu Jianjun considers crowd-funding is in fact a kind of vicarious life, media insiders are good at creating such experience. “Media is not carrier, instead it represents ability, with such ability one can do a lot of other things, and can invariably perform better than others.”
Placing the project kickoff on individuals rather than startup companies, Xu Jianjun said, can also expand institutional limited responsibility to unlimited responsibility, and better avoid the risk of project failure. www.kaistart.com also requires 20% of the capital raised by the initiator must be supplied by the initiator’s relatives or friends. Xu Jianjun believes that, acquaintance relation can further ensure the initiator’s sense of responsibility toward the project.
About the next step of this startup company, firstly, introducing products with stronger financial attribute: e.g. projects of consumer rights and interests, civilian residence and restaurants promise huge cash conversion ability; secondly, further improve mobile social networking media matrix for fans —— For a variety of social networking groups based on common life interest and economic benefits, if it can be organized and gasped by one startup company, Xu Jianjun realizes there is tremendous potential.
Second-hand car B2C platform “www.qmaiche.com” finished USD 10 million Series A financing
“www.qmaiche.com”, a leading B2C+O2O model second-hand car trading and financial service internet company in China, recently received 10 million grade investment from Meridian Capital.
This time after completing Series A financing, www.qmaiche.com will use the fund for expansion in major cities across the nation, aiming to expand service scope for consumers, up till now it has established whole-chain service system covering online trading platform, offline service center, inspection & certification center, and post-sale service directly run stores.
Only 5 months after www.qmaiche.com formally went online, its single month trading volume topped 500 cars, growth of monthly trading volume is above 35%, today www.qmaiche.com formally provides service to Beijing, Chongqing, and Nanning, at present www.qmaiche.com is making deployment in 4 cities across the nation, with one-stop second-hand car custom-made trading service experience center in all the markets, offering 1101 exclusive inspection services of www.qmaiche.com.
There is vast space in second-hand car trading market. In the first half of 2015, China’s automobile output & sales respectively reached 12.095 million vehicles and 11.8503 million vehicles, up by 2.6% and 1.4% on Y-o-Y basis, whereas second-hand car trading volume grew by 5.79% on Y-o-Y basis, higher than that of new vehicle trading. By 2020, trading volume of China’s second-hand car market is expected to reach 40 million vehicles, the market value will top 1 trillion yuan. About the question of why choosing B2C, instead of C2C and C2B, Li Heng, co-founder of www.qmaiche.com, said that currently 80% domestic trading are completed through car merchants, and this is also the case in developed countries, www.qmaiche.com considers the key targets of O2O at this stage are to optimize existing circulation approaches, and improve circulation efficiency, therefore it choose B2C as the access point.
The www.qmaiche.com team mainly consists of young people born after the 1980’s and 1990’s, the business startup team come from www.jd.com, Gome, www.autohome.com.cn, souche.com, www.cheyipai.com, and www.we.com platforms, covering Internet, second-hand cars, and finance sectors. Speaking of initial intention of business startup, relevant chief persons of www.qmaiche.com said, www.qmaiche.com is dedicated to removing consumers’ worry toward second-hand car purchase, by putting traditional tangible market onto the Internet, it aims to efficiently acquire car sources and customer sources, and significantly improve second-hand car circulation efficiency under the traditional model.
