Travel wholesale ecommerce and O2O platform Ilvyou announced it received RMB55 million (approx: US8.6 million) in its A Series financing round, from lead investor CHC Capital and joint investors Yuan Cheng Ventures and investment groups from Wuhu City. The funds will be used to expand its RD and products team, secure channels and create mobile platforms.
Anhui-based Ilvyou was established on May 7 in 2013 with RMB30 million in registered capital. Its CEO is Moling Zhang. It specializes in assisting traditional travel companies to achieve digitization, systemization and ecommerce capability by offering online travel resources and financial services to the industry. It has a directly managed comprehensive B2C retail platform and a B2B2C comprehensive wholesale and independent payment platform Lehuifu.
Mr. Zhang said China’s OTA industry has absolutely no advantage in financial control as companies still rely on third-part payment solutions to receive payments. His Lehuifu is an independently launched payment platform with payment and safety solutions that will also solve typical issues in the billing process for upstream/downstream clients.
Ilvyou will also launch a series of travel financial products in the future and market them on its B2C platform. It will also create the “150 operators plan” that will recruit agents in 150 cities in the Yangtze River and southern regions to create an O2O travel industry service chain.
CHC Capital’s director Qingwei Cao thinks that B2B operators will become very important for the online travel industry, with revenue making up 80% or more of the total income of the online tourism industry. These operators’ profit margins come from their low fees that bring down costs across the board, and the advantages of efficient integration of supply and pricing chains.(Translation by David)
