China’s Wikipedia Hudong is reportedly raising US$ 50 million Series C round, partly via Xpert Financial, a platform that private companies use to raise later-stage funding.
Hudong raised a total of more than US$ 45 million in previous rounds from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetso.
Hudong is one of the largest Wikipedia-like services in China among peers like Baidu Baike, Youdao Baike and Soso Baike. It boasts more than 4.53 million users and over 6.36 million entries at the end of this February.
The service has tried many efforts to monetize its content, for instance, In April 2011, Hudong.com officially launched Baike.com, a platform of strategy importance aiming at enterprise market for monetization. And in last April, it launched a spinoff program – Xiao Baike to combine knowledge platform and commercial platform. So far these attempts didn’t seem to fare quite well.
Hudong currently is under serious attack from competitors like Baidu Baike, while new Web 2.0 style of Q&A sites including Zhihu also stole some thunder from the traditional Wikipedia offering.