Baofeng Group Co Ltd, a Beijing-based internet entertainment and video company, announced on Thursday that it has established Baofeng New Culture Co Ltd to expand its business in culture, tourism and virtual reality, or VR.
Baofeng New culture will focus on intellectual property, or IP, investment, project incubation and operations in the fields of culture and tourism.
Working with Chongqing municipal government, the company will launch a 200-million-yuan ($29 million) fund, which will be invested in digital industry, VR content and innovation, VR experience centers and related projects.
Feng Xin, chief executive officer of Baofeng Group, said he took a rosy view of future integration between VR and the culture industry.
"In the wave of high-tech, the cultural upgrading will create richer forms of cultural tourism. And VR will play a key role in the development of cultural tourism," Feng said.
The new company will integrate artificial intelligence, the internet of things, big data, cloud computing and other technologies to develop local cultural and historical IP.
Connecting tourists, brand owners and local tourist sites, the company aims to build a cultural geographic digital system. And the online platforms' experiences will boost offline consumption.
In 2016, the VR industry is moving forward rapidly; tech giants, including Google, Facebook, HTC, Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi all cultivated VR hardware.
According to industry consultancy iResearch Consulting Group, China's VR market revenues are expected to top 5.6 billion yuan last year, and will reach 55 billion yuan by 2020.
In 2016, Baofeng Group's revenue in the VR sector reached around 20 million yuan, Feng said at the end of December.
