Groupon’s China Site Gets $30 Million Funding From Joint-Venture Partners

Groupon’s China venture has had a rough ride, but it’s still alive. The site, called Gaopeng, has just secured a reported $30 million in funding to grow the business. While the investment is confirmed officially, the number is from a source informing the QQ Tech site. The funding is mainly from the joint-venture partners: Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) and Tencent (HKG:0700).

Actually, Gaopeng was merged last summer with one other daily deals site run by Tencent to form a new company called GroupNet. Gaopeng still operates under its original name, but Groupon now has only a minor stake in the firm, way down from the normal 49:51 split in a joint-venture business.

GroupNet CEO Lin Ning revealed today that Gaopeng has now exceeded RMB 200 million ($32.4 million) in monthly sales volume from its daily deals, and says the site is close to being profitable. In our most recent deals industry stats we saw that Gaopeng is growing slightly under its new parentage, but is still a minor player in the China market. Gaopeng got $40 million in funding last October.

Yesterday we reported that Gaopeng has lost nine vice-presidents in the past year. Or perhaps they’re just handing out VP titles like cookies. Groupon declined to comment on that story.

(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)

(Editing by Anh-Minh Do)