"China's Wikipedia", Hudong.com, Raises RMB100 Million to Boost Commercialization

BEIJING, Aug. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- On August 22, Hudong.com announced that the company has raised RMB100 million in the recent round of financing to accelerate its commercialization process, and promote its presence in the mobile Internet sector.

As the world's largest Chinese encyclopedia website, Hudong.com was founded in 2005 and is known as China's Wikipedia. It has evolved into an encyclopedia site containing 5.4 million articles, 5.53 billion words and 5.82 million pictures contributed by over 3.6 million users as of July 2011. Pan Haidong, CEO of Hudong.com said previously that Hudong.com aims to provide people with a new platform for access to knowledge through the Internet. With the platform, the "Interactive Wiki Community" gets a lot of people who are willing to share their wisdom involved to make it grow. These persons join forces to create an online encyclopedia for the popularization and passing-down of knowledge in an interactive manner. Pan Haidong expects to use the Wiki technology to build a "fenceless university" to popularize the interdisciplinary Chinese knowledge and culture across the globe, enhancing the influence of Chinese culture.

In April 2011, Hudong.com officially launched Baike.com, a strategic platform for enterprise commercialization, to explore the integration of a knowledge platform with a commercial platform. Pan Haidong noted that Baike.com represents another significant step in Hudong.com's enterprise development strategy and is a further extension to Hudong.com's "Knowledge Media", and that it will lay a solid foundation for Hudong.com's overseas listing in the future.

Baike.com is a "small" open encyclopedia platform that has infinite sections with independent second-level domain names that focus on a particular area, thing and skill in people's lives. Its commercial advantages are summarized as "targeted" because the advertising model has high accuracy and excellent user adsorbability. In addition, Baike.com creates a powerful APP mobile media platform, allowing enterprises or individuals to immediately have a proprietary APP, without the help of code technicians. "Hudong.com plans to produce 10,000 mobile APPs in 2011, truly realizing the transition from an APP factory to the APP market," said Pan Haidong.

Reporters were informed that this is the third round of financing by Hudong.com and is currently in full place. Hudong.com previously received investment from institutions such as the famous American venture fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2006 and 2009, with a total financing of USD30 million.

SOURCE Hudong.com