Chinese Internet startup fxiaoke.com announced on Wednesday it had raised $100 million from investors in its latest round of funding. This is one of the largest investments in the country's business-to-business market.
Luo Xu, CEO of the "software as a service" company, said the cash will be used to turn its mobile marketing management app into an open platform, which will help Chinese companies better connect with customers, employees, products and distributors.
Software as a service, or SaaS, is a licensing and distribution model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.
Unlike the United States where 32 SaaS companies have gone public and each is valued at more than $1 billion, there is no big SaaS provider in China.
"(But) I believe a Chinese $50-billion-valuation company will emerge in the next few years," Luo said.
Lin Xinhe, co-founder of DCM Ventures, an important online investor, agreed. He said as the mobile Internet becomes more pervasive in China, corporate-focused mobile applications will be rolled out.
Fxiaoke is one of the fastest growing SaaS providers in China. It has completed three rounds of financing within a year. As of 2015, the three-year-old company has succeeded in attracting 100,000 companies to its mobile app.
Lin said Fxiaoke is expanding at a rate far beyond investors' expectations, so they decided to pour more money into the company "to fuel the fire".
Nearly half of Fxiaoke's active users are willing to pay money to enjoy its management services and more than 22 percent of them are second-time buyers, higher than its domestic competitors.
Last December, the company raised $50 million from investors.
