Chinese conglomerate Tencent is part of a group that has invested ‘tens of millions’ of yuan in Beijing-based events and ticketing platform Huodongxing.
Tencent, co-working space start-up UrWork and Japanese human resources firm Recruit Holdings are among those to have contributed towards the series A+ round.
Tencent is to create a new advertisement channel for Huodongxing, while UrWork will provide event venues and introduce 1,500 small and medium sized companies to join the platform. Recruit plans to help Huodongxing expand into the Japanese market.
The investment values the platform – which offers similar services to Eventbrite – at over RMB300m ($44m/€39m) post-money, according to local media reports.
Huodongxing sold 4m tickets in 2016
Founded in 2012, Huodongxing is believed to be the largest event online ticketing platform in China, and sold four million tickets to around 10 million customers in 2016. It has provided services for over 100,000 event organisers including Tencent, Huawei Technologies, Microsoft Corp, Alibaba Group and Sina.
Tencent already has a presence in the sector as it is a partner and investor in Weying, the company that owns Wepiao, a major movie tickets platform.
Huodongxing previously raised tens of millions of US dollars from SAIF Partners, Qualcomm and DCM Ventures, and plans to use the latest proceeds to expand into more cities and improve its team.
The deal comes just weeks after another Chinese online ticket sales platform Ferris Wheel Ticketing raised $15m in funding from Blue Lake Capital, DCM Ventures, Matrix Partners China, K2VC and Zhen Fund.
Ferris Wheel Ticketing provides services to buyers and sellers of tickets of concerts, operas, dramas, musicals, dance and ballet shows and exhibitions in China. It sells approximately 60,000 tickets per month, earning almost $4m, while also providing discount tickets and seat reservation services.
In March, another huge Chinese group, Alibaba, fully acquired Damai.cn, a Bejing-based online ticketing platform, for an undisclosed amount of money.
Image: Nicolas Raymond
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