Mafengwo, a Beijing, China-based online travel platform, raised $250m in funding.
The round was led by Tencent Holdings with participation from General Atlantic, Qiming Venture Partners, Yuantai Evergreen Investment Partners, NM Strategic Focus Fund and eGarden Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach.
Officially launched in 2010 by Gang Chen, CEO, Mafengwo is a travel website popular among younger generations in China.
FinSMEs
23/05/2019
THE PRESS RELEASE
Mafengwo Raises $250 Million in New Funding Round Led by Tencent
May 23, 2019, 08:57 ET
BEIJING, May 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — On May 23, 2019, Mafengwo announced that it has raised $250 million in its latest round of funding with Tencent Holdings Limited as a lead investor, and General Atlantic, Qiming Venture Partners, Yuantai Evergreen Investment Partners, NM Strategic Focus Fund and eGarden Ventures as co-investors. This new funding round has consolidated Mafengwo’s position as a content giant in the tourism industry, which indicates that this online travel platform deeply rooted in the online travel community has risen to be a leading player.
Mafengwo, a popular travel website among younger generations in China, officially started its commercial operation back in 2010. With massive high-quality original UGC and active users, it has rapidly become the largest travel community in China. Starting from hotel reservation service in 2015, Mafengwo has been continuously deepening its supply chain and forging its service capabilities to realize a complete commercial closed loop from community to e-commerce and from content to transaction. Mafengwo has achieved a Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) growth of over 100% for four consecutive years. It is one of the few successful samples of content commercialization in the internet industry.
Gang Chen, Co-Founder and CEO of Mafengwo, said, “It has always been our mission to realize everyone’s travel dream. This latest round of funding will enable us to bring more high-quality travel intelligence and efficiency to Chinese travelers when it comes to making well-informed travel decisions. It can also help us create better travel experiences for our consumers by offering them more creative ideas and plans.” He mentioned that Mafengwo would continue to reinforce the content barriers of “tourist consumption decision” by building a new one-stop travel service platform driven by AI and algorithm.
Mafengwo completed its series D funding of $133 million in December 2017 from global leading investment firms including General Atlantic and Temasek, and others. This latest infusion of capital led by Tencent Holdings Limited represents that Mafengwo has officially become a key player in Tencent’s layout, which will present a new competitive landscape in online travel market as well.
In April, Gang Chen proposed a “New 3C Travel Strategy,” which further emphasized the commercialization capability of pivoting around Content and leading Consumer and sustainable Commercialization.
“Nowadays, Mafengwo has become the leader of new tourism e-commerce when online travel market has scaled up to trillion milestone,” said Haifeng Lin, the investment and management partner of Tencent Holdings Limited. “By virtue of the content accumulated over ten years and the extremely strong techniques and innovation capabilities, Mafengwo has developed a successful model in the field of content e-commerce. We are pleased to support the continued rapid growth of Mafengwo’s business through this round of investment. And we will fully leverage Tencent’s content resources to assist Mafengwo in accomplishing a new leap forward.”