Mayi.com, one of the latest Chinese Airbnb wannabe, told Chinese portal Sina yesterday that the startup would be raising Series A round of up to US$ 10 million led by Vantagepoint with participation of BlueRun and Sequoia China. The funding is currently the largest one in Chinese vacation rental field.
Ganji, the Chinese classified site, gave out a local answer to vacation rental with the launch of Mayi.com late last year powered by a seed funding of US$ 20 million from Ganji. One strength of the service lies in the security check in which Mayi.com will send staff to validate the house to make sure renters’ safety. Not sure how scalable this could be if the Beijing-based startup grows at expected growth to expand available rooms to more than 100k in a year.
Zhang Guanglong, CEO of the company said the funding would go towards technology revamp and mobile developments. He claimed that as of now Mayi.com grabbed more than 40% of the market and crossed 300k room nights so far.
Yang Yonghao, CEO of Ganji said that the company would be keep investing into the effort across the board from aspects like branding, traffic, mobile development and so on, he saw a billion dollar business in the initiative and defined Mayi as a strategic move in the heated trend of online2offline for the 8-year-old company.
screenshot of Mayi.com homepage
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