Hudong Baike, the Chinese Wikipedia announced today to invest RMB 80 million to ramp up its mobile efforts with revamped WAP site and to-be-launched mobile smartphone clients.
Founded in 2005, the Beijing-based company as of this February claims more than 4.53 million users and over 6.36 million entries. It raised an aggregate of US$ 30 million in its first two rounds of financing from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetso, and announced raising US$ 15.7 million (RMB 100 million) in last September.
Last April, Hudong Baike launched spinoff program – Xiao Baike (or Baike Junior) to explore the combination of knowledge platform and commercial platform. In the wake of its Series C round in early September of last year, the company vowed to invest RMB 100 million into the service, with – in retrospect – not so juicy results.
New knowledge-sharing services like Zhihu (Quora clone) stole some thunder from the self-claimed largest Chinese online encyclopedia, and I questioned how much tapping into the mobile trend could help with that.
screenshot of Xiao Baike