E-Reading App Maker Duokan Received US$ 10M from Leijun

Local news broke that Duokan, a Beijing-based e-reading app maker has received US$ 10 million from China’s well-known angel Leijun among other investors including Xu Xiaoping and MorningSide Ventures.

Founded in 2010, with Leijun and Xu Xiaoping, founder of ZhenFund and a well-respected Chinese angel sitting on its board, Duokan earned its early fame through making application for Amazon Kindle in China. Yes, you read it right, even though Kindle hasn’t been made available officially in China, Chinese managed to buy tons of Kindle from grey market or by asking their friends to bring back the device from overseas.

One might speculate that, what makes Kindle attractive is the solid converge of the hardware and the Kindle bookstore. Since the bookstore isn’t available in China, what do Chinese people buy Kindle for?

That’s when Duokan comes to rescue. For example, the company’s flagship product Duokan for Kindle could function as a full-fledged “Kindle Book Store” in China with which you can register an account and then access to millions of Chinese books online – though not sure how many of those books are copyrighted. It also supports a raft of file formats ranging from txt, pdf, epub, mobi, zip, rar, jpg, png to bmp.

Except for Duokan for Kindle, the company also has offerings for all the other major platforms like Android, iOS, Windows Phone and, even Apple TV. With Duokan for Apple TV, you can stream video provided by Qiyi, Sohu and Youku on Apple TV.

(photo courtesy of BigStock)

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