New York, NY (Top40 Charts) NetEase Cloud Music, a popular online music platform in China, held a press conference in Shanghai on April 11 to disclose that it has reached 300 million users and that the company recently completed the A round financing, which, according to Zhu Yiwen, CEO of NetEase Cloud Music, raised RMB 750 million (approx. USD 108 million). Shanghai Media Group (SMG) led the strategic investment and was joined by
Mango Cultural and Creative
Industry Private Equity Fund (Mango Cultural and Creative Industry) and CICC Jiatai Fund. The financing valued NetEase Cloud
Music at around RMB 8 billion (approx. USD 1.16 billion), making it a Chinese internet "unicorn company" merely four years after it was launched in April, 2013.
As introduced by Zhu Yiwen, the capital raised in the financing will be mainly used for enhancing the user experience of the NetEase Cloud
Music products, increasing investment on content, developing a healthy patent system and establishing a solution for the upstream and downstream music to provide the users with abundant resources of high quality music.
During this round of financing, NetEase Cloud
Music entrusted Fortune Finance, also a NetEase company, as its exclusive financial advisor. It is the first time for NetEase to have its products open to the domestic capital market, demonstrating its increasingly open mind and long term strategy in the music industry.
William Lei Ding, founder and CEO of NetEase said that the A round financing is the first step to realize a bigger dream and hope that NetEase Cloud
Music can show much better performance in growth rate and quality.
William Lei Ding also said that NetEase, as a solid backing, would as always support the development of NetEase Cloud
Music and help it to obtain higher achievements.
It has to be noted that the investors of the A round financing of NetEase Cloud
Music are very eye-catching with not only the "National Team" media giant but also top investing institutes. SMG, the leading strategic investor, is a comprehensive culture industry group with the most industry categories and largest scale in China. Its business scope covers media operation, network transport, content production and patent, internet new media, on-site performance, culture tourism and estate, culture investment and e-commerce. It not only possesses the domestically top content producing and IP development capability, but also strong ability of integrating resources and appeal in the industry.
Another strategic investor,
Mango Cultural and Creative
Industry Private Equity Fund, is a fund established by
Mango Media under the flagship of Hunan Broadcasting System. It was founded in December, 2015. It focuses on the investment and layout of cultural and creative projects based on the large culture industry including movies, TV series, variety show, music, manga, sports and mobile internet apps.
CICC Jiatai Fund is a private equity fund solely funded by China International Finance Company Limited. CICC is the first joint-funded investment bank in China and has been involved in pan-culture and new economy.
Zhu Yiwen also said that NetEase Cloud
Music will develop deeper coordination with the strategic investors in formulating strategies and expanding businesses so as to establish a music eco-chain and value-chain.
NetEase Cloud Music, launched in April, 2013, is a music product well known for its discoveries and sharing under the flagship of NetEase. Over the past four years, it showed faster growth rate than other similar products in the market. In July, 2015, its users broke 100 million and one year later, the number broke 200 million. At the press conference held on April 11, Zhu Yiwen discloses that the users have reached 300 million. As the completion of the A round financing, the company will go into a brand new route. Zhu Yiwen highlights that although we have went into a new route, our original intention has never changed, discover and share more good music and improve the Chinese music industry through the internet.
