Viadeo, the social network for professionals with north of 45 million members worldwide, announced today raising a record US$ 32 million Series D round of financing from investors including Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement, existing institutional shareholders and a pool of new investors including Allianz, Jefferies and Middle Eastern private funds. The funding will go towards stepping up the company’s position and growth in Europe and China as well as in other emerging markets – especially the BRIC – like Latin America, Russia, India and Africa. Viadeo operated its China effort through Tianji.com, its China subsidiary.
Boasting a whopper user base of more than 45 million, Viadeo is now the second largest professional social network in the world only next to LinkedIn. The France-based is growing fast with more than 1 million new members joining in monthly. It started making profit in early September of 2009, ascribing to its capability to quickly grow and monetize its membership, as well as to provide robust business solutions for recruiting and advertising.
With a clear focus on non-English speaking markets, Viadeo has secured a dominant presence throughout the world. It is an industry leader in Europe and Latin America and clear No.1 in China. The company continues to pursue an aggressive international development strategy with recent partnerships like the announcement of a joint venture in Russia in the second half of 2011.
Viadeo differentiated itself from LinkedIn in its focus on non-English speaking markets, which help the company become the dominant player in areas including Europe, Latin America and the obvious No.1 in China.
As of now, Viadeo’s China effort Tianji.com claims an aggregate of 10 million registered users and has seen tremendous growth in last year.
Dan Serfaty, CEO of Viadeo said that the company is a global society where critical business connections are made available through different languages and spanning geographies and cultures. Viadeo’s “multi-local” approach, which “focuses on catering to the local market, and understanding the business and cultural needs of each market … has rewarded us tremendous growth and success in both Europe and emerging markets”, said Dan.