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Online Travel

Mafengwo Raises $133 Million as a Booking App for Chinese Millennials

Sean O'Neill photo
Sean O'Neill
mafengo

Photo Credit: Mafengo, a social travel guide website and app, offers sample itineraries photographed by models. It claims millions of monthly users and has just raised a mammoth funding round. Mafengo

Skift Take

Mafengwo gained traction among millennials partly due to China having banned Facebook and Instagram. A lack of competition gave the company room to be a place where young Chinese can share travel photos, and that attracted new customers to look at the company's bookable travel offerings.

Mafengwo, a social trip-planning site, has raised a Series D fundraising round of $133 million, and co-founder and CEO Chen Gang said he planned to turn the business into a shopping mall similar to retailer Alibaba, but focused on travel. Venture capital firms General Atlantic, Ocean Link, Temasek, Yuantai Investment, and Hopu joined as new investors in the company, while existing investors Capital Today, Qiming Venture Partners, and Hillhouse Capital also pitched in. The company has raised more than $153 million to date. It declined to disclose its Series C round other than to say it had raised "tens of millions of dollars" in 2015. Mafengwo has drawn the interest of investors to its claim that it has attracted an audience of Chinese millennials who travel independently instead of taking group package to

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