Renren Ucredit, the parent company of P2P lending service Renrendai, reportedly booked $130 million of Series A funding led by Trustbridge Partners ($65 million) and an undisclosed institution ($65 million) (source in Chinese). The angel round is raised from Honghe Venture Capital in 2010. [Update: Renren Ucredit officially announced the news on Jan. 9]
Renrendai adopts an operating model similar to Lending Club’s when it was launched in 2010, mainly focused on online micro-credit business. The company integrated with offline lending service Ucredit in 2012.
According to data released by the company, Renrendai’s turnover surged 276% year-over-year in the first half of 2013, hitting 1 billion yuan ($165.2 million) as of August of 2013.
P2P lending platforms has attracted attentions of investors and entrepreneurs since November of 2013. Youli, a P2P lending platform mainly cooperates with offline micro-credit companies, has raised tens of millions of dollars from SBCVC. Itouzi, a platform mainly cooperates with financing guarantee institutions, is also in talks with investors.
P2P lending industry experienced a chaotic year in 2013. On the one hand, several companies like Dianrong, Renrendai and Youli received huge capital injections. On the other hand, more than 70 P2P sites were closed in the past year, according to data from Wangdai Zhijia.
After two years of observation, the government is expected to release laws on P2P industry in this year. More players will be weeded out in 2014 under the pressures of fiercer competition and stiffer regulations. The market share left out by the withdrawal of these competitors will be devoured by leading companies. Maybe that’s why venture capital starts to inject capital in leading companies in the latter half of last year.
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