China Tech Roundup: Baike.com IPO? Alipay Restructure Rumor

Baike.com set up sales units for IPO? Chinese independent online encyclopedia service Hudong Baike (Baike.com) which raised RMB 100 million in its latest funding in last August reportedly set up regional sales business units based in Beijing, eastern and southern part of China to ramp up sales force and revenue. The move is also interpreted as Hudong’s preparation for an IPO. Last time it’s CEO Mr. Pan Haidong mentioned about going public was two years back in 2011.

The service to date has over 7 million entries and ranks 41 in China by Alexa.

Apple’s ban on Qihoo360 apps persists. Qihoo 360’s apps were removed from App Store by Apple since the end of last month and the ban seems to persist as those apps were still unsearchable. Earlier this month Qihoo sent the company’s CFO to the U.S. to negotiate with Apple on lifting the ban.

Weixin combines voice search and ecommerce. Tencent’s Weixin now hosts a large quantity of varied services that leveraged on its platform. One of the latest demonstrates an interesting use case of combining voice search and mobile ecommerce, according to Mr. Wu Xiaoguang, CEO of the company’s ecomm arm. All one need to is to tell Weixin what’s in your mind, then Weixin can find an appropriate vendor to follow up till a deal is made.

Alipay is rumored to be restructured into four business groups, including Alipay and shared platform BG, financial BG, domestic BG and international BG. Alipay hasn’t responded to the rumor yet.