China's P2P lender PPDai hits the jackpot

PPDai, one of China's largest P2P online lending platforms, on Wednesday announced the completion of its series B financing round led by Lightspeed China Partners.

Other investors in the round include Sequoia Capital China and Noah Holdings. Renrendai, another major P2P player, booked 130 million U.S. dollars of Series A funding led by Trustbridge Partners at the end of last year.

The size of this round amounts to tens of millions of U.S. dollars, and the proceeds will be mainly used for operations, continued enhancement of the platform's online credit scoring system and IT infrastructure, said Cliff Zhang, PPDai's co-founder and chief executive officer.

PPdai's online credit control and scoring systems are the company's key competitive advantages over other P2P lenders and traditional financial services companies, said Zhang at a press briefing.

By collecting borrowers' data across multiple dimensions, PPDai is able to evaluate their borrowers' default risk as well as compute their credit limits and the associated interest rates, he said.

Lightspeed China Partners is an early-stage investor in a number of innovative domestic Internet financial services companies such as Dianping.com and BTC China.

Noah Holdings, a co-investor in this round, is a listed independent wealth management company on the New York Stock Exchange.

PPDai was established in June 2007. It received Series A funding from Sequoia Capital in 2012.

P2P lending is the practice of lending money to unrelated individuals that bypass the banking industry. It was introduced to China in 2006.

By the end of 2013, the number of P2P lending companies in China had exceeded 800 with a yearly turnover of 100 billion yuan, according to Wangdaizhijia, a web portal that tracks the industry.