Youku raises US$40 mln from backers

Fri Jul 04 02:40:50 PDT 2008

Jul. 4, 2008 (China Knowledge) - Youku.com, one of China's largest video sharing sites, announced it had received aggregate capital infusion of US$40 million after the fourth round financing.

According to the company's statement, Youku has received US$30 million from four existing investors - Brookside Capital Partners (subsidiary of the U.S.-based Bain Capital LLC), Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures, besides a US$10 million technology equipment loan provided by Western Technology Investment, which has provided the same kind of loans to world's well-known Internet companies, including Google Inc and Facebook. Inc.

Newspaper reports said Youku is the first domestic Internet company to have been offered such a loan by Western Technology.

Youku is the No.1 online video website in China, as rated by third party organizations such as Baidu.com Inc.<BIDU> which is the leading Chinese search engine. It has attracted over 100 million visitors per month and each user spends about 300 minutes per month on Youku.

According to research reports, it is now the sixth largest website in China in terms of total user time spent; over 60 global and local brands advertise on the site.