China’s MICE platform Eventown announced the completion of its round B financing. Eventown CEO Liang Tang confirmed the lead investor of this round is DFJ DragonFund, but did not disclose the terms.
The fund raised will be used in three aspects: first, to further build and promote Eventown as a MICE OTA by enriching its conference services; second, to develop and expand enterprise-level customers base and promote adoption of Eventown’s management systems for corporate travel procurement, high-frequency meetings and EventDove participants; third, to strengthen standardized service and to expand more and better venues.
Eventown's goal is to be a Ctrip-equivalent in the B2B corporate travel sector, or what Mr. Tang brands as a MICE OTA. By connecting venues and enterprises, the platform hopes to reduce the overall costs on procurement, business travel and conference for corporate customers, while attracting new customers, long-term orders and brand awareness for venue providers. Eventown makes money from advertising revenues from venues and service fees from corporate customers.
The products of Eventown fall into four categories: B2B MICE and business travel procurement system, B2B2C-focused Eventown platform, attendees-focused EventDove and venue-focused management system. At present, the Eventown platform is listing 550,000 conference venues (hotels included) in more than 2,000 counties and cities in China. In 2016, the platform acquired an additional 500,000 independent B2B users, and had 18,000 active users every month.
GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) of the company in 2015 had reached RMB 200 million per month. Though unwilling to disclose the 2017 performance data, Mr. Tang expects the business to break even this year and become profitable in 2018.
Established in 2007 and one of the four biggest O2O platforms in the MICE industry along with HotelGG, Taohuichang and Huixiaoer, Eventown has obtained its first financing in 2013, the A round financing in 2015 and then the B round financing in 2016.
