Fast growth of the Internet causes an increasing number of foreign firms to cast eye on the Chinese Internet finance.
Foreign capital always wants to establish a leading position in the Chinese financial market, but due to high thresholds, it failed to achieve the goal. However, fast growth of the Internet just provides it a good opportunity.
Soul Htite, technician director and co-founder with US P2P lender LendingClub said that it thought highly of a sharp edge China owned in talents, market and information infrastructure. He as CEO of Shanghai-based P2P lender SinoLending attended a global Internet finance forum in Beijing recently and stressed that the capital of SinoLending had no relation with that of LendingClub and in the former, he took charge of the management only. However, industry observers believe that through SinoLending, shareholders of LendingClub want to make a killing from the Chinese Internet finance as Guo Yuhang, co-president of SinoLending, said that there would be possibility for it to cooperate with LendingClub in the future.
Private equity and venture capital firms cast eye on the Chinese Internet finance in succession in recent years, with foreign funds even having become the major force. In July this year, online Chinese financing and lending platform Rong360.com received an investment of USD 30 million from Sequoia Capital. Last year, the investor injected USD 25 million into Chinese P2P platform Ppdai.com. And provided that the capital it invested in other similar projects in the market is taken into consideration, the capital has exceeded USD 1000 million in total. IDG injected a large amount into Chinese P2P platform Creditease.cn as early as 2011 and by the end of this September, a financial innovation fund established by both sides had seen USD 100 million be mainly invested in initial Internet financial projects.
Li Xinhe, founder and CEO of online Chinese financing and lending platform Renrendai.com, said that many institutions contacted it for investment issues recently. President of a Chinese investor said that Google invested USD 125 million in LendingClub in July this year and this caused foreign capital to show rising interest in the Chinese Internet financial industry. And a list of foreign funds contacted it for related issues currently.
Statistics show that there are about 500 P2P platforms in the market and the figure rises by three to five per day and is expected to hit 800 at the end of this year. Their trading volume is expected to hit CNY 100 billion this year, compared to only about CNY 20 billion last year.
