Chinese video conferencing service Xiaoyu Yilian, also known as Little Fish Easy Connect, closed its Series C financing round with Tencent as the main investor, according to the official WeChat account of Tencent’s investment arm.
Tencent did not reveal the financial details for the deal. However, Chinese media outlet ifeng.com said Little Fish took in “several hundred million in RMB” (which amounts to multiples of USD 14.9 million) .
Little Fish claims it is the only Chinese company that has in-house cloud-based video communication hardware and software.
Use cases are for example when meetings need to be held with participants in different locations, or companies need to interview potential employees via video conference. A job applicant can start a video call with the interviewer by simply clicking an invitation link sent via WeChat, said Little Fish, which has added a mini program on the instant messaging app.
Little Fish has also enabled provincial officials in Central China’s Hubei province to remotely monitor real-life situations like river pollution, without actually needing to patrol the banks of these rivers.
The video communication solution provider has tens of thousands of enterprise-level clients, said Tencent.
In the US, Zoom, a company similar to Little Fish, plans to raise up to USD 840 million in its IPO, according to its latest prospectus filed on Tuesday.
The company is believed to be worth USD 8 billion — an 8-fold spike from its last valuation on the private markets in 2017, when it was estimated to be a USD 1 billion company, according to tech news site Recode.
Contact the writer at jingli@kr-asia.com
Editor: Nadine Freischlad
