Dianrong, China’s leading P2P loan service, announced that it has secured new financing from Tiger Global. The specific investment was not disclosed but it was reported to be between tens to hundreds of million of dollars. The funds will be invested in technology development and team construction, according to company co-founder and CEO Guo Yuhang.
The platform had just received funding from Sun Hun Kai & Co. Ltd. three months earlier, while other existing investors include ZJ Capital and Northern Light.
Shanghai-based Dianrong is a P2P lending platform for small and medium loans founded by Soul Htite, the co-founder and former technology head of the newly-listed U.S. counterpart Lending Club.
Guo disclosed that Dianrong’s annual turnover exceeded RMB1 billion (roughly US$161 million) in 2014, a figure estimated to surge five-tenfold during 2015. He also predicted that Chinese P2P industry will attract further capital injections in 2015.
As a leading global hedge fund, Tiger Global mainly focuses on the primary market and is an investor in the internet giants Alibaba, JD, Twitter, and Facebook, amongst others. The Dianrong funding marks the first occasion of the fund investing in a Chinese internet finance company.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)