Alibaba Group’s corporate venturing unit, Alibaba Capital Partners, has led a $20m series B private placement round of funding for China-based outbound travel service company Byecity. CBC Capital, a China private equity firm focusing on media and communications, also participated in the deal.
Byecity operates a website that provides information including departure dates, flight timetables, hotel choices and route plans. The capital will go towards building Byecity’s network, IT infrastructure as well as branding and online user experience.
This is not the first travel business that has attracted Alibaba’s coffers. The corporate venturing unit of the China-based e-trader has also invested in travel service companies including Taobao Travel, Travel Department, 117go, Qyer and Etao, according to news online deal sources such as CrunchBase and Technode.
The total amount of funding raised by Byecity to date has not been made public. However, it has been reported that the business raised $10m in 2008 from private equity firm JAFCO Asia and Investor Growth Capital.
Byecity later went on to attract an undisclosed amount of capital in 2012 from TaishanXD, an institutional business angel that invests into high growth angel stage and early stage start-ups in China. TaishanXD was jointly founded in 2008 by serial entrepreneurs in China, headed by Raymond Lei Yang, Sebastian Kuebler and Jackie Chen.
Set up in 1999, Byecity still places its priority on its visa application service, which customers are attracted to because it reduces the burden and stress related to applying for outbound travel papers. The site also has a policy of reimbursing those customers whose visa applications have failed.
The company claims its visa application service has a success rate of 99.8%. In 2013, it processed more than 400,000 visa applications, which accounted for a 471% year-on-year increase in business from 2012 and a 1,233% rise from 2011.