Company / division: Tencent
Indian Ride Sharing Service Ola Raises $1.1bn from Tencent, SoftBank, Others (Oct 11, 2017)
Indian ride sharing service Ola, which is the main rival to Uber in that market, is in the process of a large fundraising round, with backing from Tencent, SoftBank, and a variety of others. Ola arguably needed additional funding to be able to compete on more level terms with Uber, while Tencent and SoftBank have invested previously in India and the international ride sharing space respectively, their interests merging in Ola. The biggest risk for Uber in India is another failure and ultimate concession of the market to a stronger local competitor along the lines of what’s happened in China and Russia over the past eighteen months, so it’s clearly not about to give up there. But the two have been battling for supremacy for some time now without an obvious winner, in what’s one of the fastest-growing and potentially one of the largest ride sharing markets in the world.
via TechCrunch
★ Alibaba and Tencent Deliver Strong Growth and Profits in Q2 (Aug 17, 2017)
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Tencent, Baidu and Sina Under Investigation in China Over Failure to Police Content (Aug 11, 2017)
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Essential Gets Additional Funding from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Tencent (Aug 9, 2017)
Essential, Android founder Andy Rubin’s fledgling smartphone outfit, has announced additional funding from companies including Tencent and Amazon, but still refuses to say exactly when its smartphone will go on sale, saying only that a date will be announced in a week or so. It’s also announced that Amazon and Best Buy will be the retail partners for launch, while Sprint was announced earlier as the exclusive US carrier partner. If you’ve read any of my previous pieces on Essential, especially the first one, you’ll know how skeptical I am that an effort like this can succeed. The market is so mature at this point and the distribution and other battle lines so clear that breaking in with yet another Android phone will be a real challenge, one further exacerbated by what’s going to be limited distribution on the weakest carrier in the US. The funding is therefore intriguing, because it suggests these backers see something in the phone that I don’t. Importantly, it’s Amazon’s Alexa Fund specifically that’s making that company’s investment, something the Journal piece I’m linking to here doesn’t dig into at all, but which suggests that the phone will major on Alexa integration, something hinted at earlier by Andy Rubin as part of a statement about the phone’s ecumenical approach to voice assistants, but not made explicit. And backing from both Foxconn and Tencent is intriguing in the context of a phone that’s mostly being launched in North America for now. Recent conversations I’ve had suggest Amazon’s smartphone sales business is going very well, but of course many of its sales are of the kind of low-end prepaid handsets people buy outright anyway rather than the higher-end premium hardware Essential will be selling. I continue to be very bearish on Essential, but at least it sounds like we might finally see the hardware hit the market soon.
via WSJ
Chinese Censors Now Block Images in Unencrypted Messaging Apps in Flight (Jul 18, 2017)
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Stripe Partners with Alipay, WeChat Pay (Jul 10, 2017)
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Tencent Imposes Restrictions on Children’s Use of Popular Mobile Game (Jul 5, 2017)
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China Overtakes US to Become Top Contributor to $100bn Global Gaming Market (Jun 2, 2017)
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Apple and Tencent in Battle over In-App Purchase Requirement for Tipping (May 18, 2017)
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Flipkart raises $1.4Bn from Tencent, eBay & Microsoft at $11.6Bn valuation, acquires eBay India – Economic Times (Apr 10, 2017)
There were recent rumors that Japan’s SoftBank might want to combine its investment in Snapdeal with an acquisition of Flipkart, but this funding news suggests that’s going to come later if it comes at all. The trio of companies investing here is intriguing. Tencent is perhaps the least surprising, as a company that invests heavily overseas including the US in minority stakes. eBay is apparently using this investment as a vehicle to buy into a bigger e-commerce business in India, as it’s transferring its own Indian operations to Flipkart as part of the process. Microsoft is the most interesting of all – though Flipkart recently switched to Azure for cloud services, Microsoft has no significant direct stake in an e-commerce anywhere else, so this is something of a departure for them, though of course major competitor Amazon already combines cloud and retail. Flipkart had in the past seemed to be the leader in the Indian e-commerce market, but has fallen from that role in the last couple of years as two overseas companies – Amazon and Alibaba – have made inroads there. This is a down round over the company’s previous valuation, but it and its new investors will be hoping the infusion of cash helps it get back into contention.
via Economic Times
China’s Tencent Buys 5% Stake in Tesla – WSJ (Mar 28, 2017)
Tencent has been one of the most active Chinese investors in the US tech industry, and here’s another investment. It already has stakes in both Uber and Lyft, and although Baidu has been making bigger direct investments in autonomous driving in the US, Tencent’s indirect investments in transportation in the US are growing. This is a nice vote of confidence in Tesla at a time when it’s trying to raise money to fund the Model 3 manufacturing ramp, and it also gives Tencent decent exposure to what has been a nice growth stock so far this year.
via WSJ
Chinese investors buy stake in mapping firm HERE | Reuters (Dec 27, 2016)
HERE is Nokia’s former mapping division, which was sold to a consortium of carmakers in 2015. China is one of the most important markets for carmakers and an important new market for HERE’s map data too, so this seems a great strategic fit. And it also allows the Chinese backers access to global mapping and navigation data, which will be useful in their expansion outside China.
via Chinese investors buy stake in mapping firm HERE | Reuters
US Startup Investments By China’s Internet Giants Slow Down in 2016 – CB Insights (Nov 10, 2016)
This is a great overview of some of the significant investments the four major Chinese Internet companies have made in the US over the past few years. A few things stand out: Tencent has invested significantly more than the others, both in dollar terms and in the number of individual investments; California has received 79% of the total investments made, with most other states only capturing a small number of deals or none at all; investments appear to have peaked in 2016 and dropped in 2015 (though this analysis doesn’t capture the whole of 2016). A lot of the investments are in tiny companies you’ve never heard of, but there are some exceptions: Alibaba and Tencent in Lyft and Snap; Alibaba in ShopRunner, MagicLeap, and Jet.com; Baidu in Uber; and Tencent in Cyanogen. Most of these are small minority investments, but the overall number is significant – the big Chinese companies have been far more able and willing to invest in US properties than vice versa.
via CB Insights