New | Wanda E-commerce quadruples value as it completes first round of financing

Wanda E-commerce, a joint venture between Dalian Wanda, Tencent and Baidu has finished its first round of financing that quadruples the value of the 4 month-old company at 20 billion yuan (HK$25.4 billion), according to domestic reports on Monday.

With a total investment of 1 billion yuan, two investment funds, Centec Networks and Xude Rendao, will respectively hold 3 per cent and 2 per cent in Wanda E-commerce.

Wanda E-commerce was registered in Hong Kong in August with a registered capital of 5 billion yuan, in which Wanda holds 70 per cent, while Shenzhen-based Tencent and Beijing-headquartered Baidu each owns 15 per cent of the firm. Currently the 70 per cent stake of Wanda is equally held by Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin and Hong Kong-listed Wanda Commercial.

The new valuation shows huge market appetite for tech firms. Last month, the valuation of mainland smartphone vendor Xiaomi was pushed to US$45 billion, following a US$1.1 billion funding round. When Xiaomi raised the first round of fund at the end of 2010, valuation of the company was US$250 million.

The market is confident in the lineup between the three industry giants and their planned O2O business model.

In December Wanda acquired a controlling stake in China’s fourth ranked online payment platform 99Bill, assuming control of an important payment platform to advance its e-commerce and finance related businesses. It is expected services of Wanda E-commerce will be lunched in the fourth quarter of 2015.