Alibaba Pictures, the film and television subsidiary, has received a massive $260 million series A funding from Ant Financial and Sina.com
The film and television subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Alibaba Pictures, has been growing in the region at a significant pace. According to the Wall Street Journal, the subsidiary recently received a massive $260 million (1.7 billion RMB) in Series A funding to improve Taobao Movie, its online ticketing platform. The latest funding gives it a new valuation of over $2.1 billion (13.7 billion RMB) which is a huge jump in the market.
Sources suggest that there were a few investors including Ant Financial Services Group (the financial affiliate of Alibaba Group), Sina.com (a web portal), and CDH Investments who led the funding round for Alibaba Pictures. There were other investors as well whose names were disclosed in the list however they will be working as strategic partners for its online ticketing platform, Taobao Movie. The strategic partners include BONA Film, Hehe Pictures, and Huace Media.
It is believed that the operation was given a valuation of $266 million by an independent appraiser when Alibaba Pictures decided to buy this business from its parent company, Alibaba Group Holding, for a value of $473 million. That also included Yulebao, a crowdfunding platform for movies and TV shows. The company says sales through its service have grown rapidly over the past year.
However despite of receiving such a massive investment, Alibaba Picture would have much time on its hands to celebrate it as it has to focus and engage with other tech giants in China and throughout the world to get an early lead in the Online to Offline (O2O) services. It is known that Alibaba is taking positive steps towards the O2O market and it has made several deals and acquisitions as well that will prove in improving its market presence in this sector.
The tech giants in China are working very hard to come up with offline services that would provide online customers with food delivery, groceries, laundry, coupons, and movies etc. Taobao Movie has not yet become a profitable business for Alibaba Pictures and still trails the market rivals Baidu, Meituan Dianping, and Tencent Holdings in terms of market share. It is important to know that the Chinese tech giant recently sold the leading O2O player Meituan Dianping which owns the leading movie ticketing website called Maoyan.
Alibaba Pictures Group said in its disclosure, “Taobao Movie’s Series A will be used to sustain its operations and further strengthen its market position in a competitive and fast developing business segment.”
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