China’s Dianping soon to complete $850M funding round: report

Dianping, a Chinese amalgamation of Yelp and Groupon, will soon complete a US$850 million funding round, according to QQ Tech.

Dianping refused to comment on the deal in a phone call with Tech in Asia. We have reached out to some of the investors listed in QQ Tech’s article for comment.

QQ Tech reports the investors include Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, Chinese property giant Wanda Group, and Hina Group, along with some of the company’s previous investors.

Dianping is China’s most popular site for reviews of restaurants and other local businesses. It generates revenue largely from its group buying ecommerce site and app.

Here’s a rundown of the company’s previous funding rounds:

• January 2006, US$2 million series A round from Sequoia Capital
• May 2007, US$25 million series B round from Google Ventures and Sequoia Capital
• April 2011, US$100 million series C round from Sequoia Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and Lightspeed Ventures
• August 2012, US$64 million series D round from Sequoia Capital, Capital Today, and EZ Capital

Last year, Chinese web giant Tencent took a 20 percent stake in Dianping. The terms of that deal were not disclosed, but estimates are in the US$500 million range. Dianping was soon after incorporated in Tencent’s WeChat, the most popular messaging app in the country with 468 million monthly active users.

QQ Tech states that sources told it Dianping originally only planned to raise about US$300 million. But after it’s chief competitor, Meituan, raised US$700 million, it felt it had to keep pace. According to an iResearch report from 2013, Alibaba’s Juhuasuan is China’s top daily deals site, followed by Meituan and then Dianping.

(Source: QQ Tech)