Anjuke Invests RMB 200 Mln on R&D, to Postpone IPO
Netease Tech, 8/10/10
Online real estate firm Anjuke said that it will invest RMB 100 mln each in subsidiaries Aifang.com and Haozu.com for technology development and employee recruitment in order to speed up the two companies' expansion. CEO Liang Weiping said that Anjuke will postpone its plans to IPO in Q4 2010, and that the company hopes to expand to a greater scale before listing.
Anjuke was founded in 2007, and began by providing information on second-hand home sales. At present, Anjuke has more than 60,000 paying real estate agents around the country, and income from its second-hand homes business accounts for 90% of Anjuke's total revenues. In 2009, Anjuke began gradually to move from second-hand housing into the new housing market, and entered into the home rental market at the start of this year. At the start of the year, Anjuke split its services into Anjuke for second-hand homes, Aifang.com for new homes, and Haozu.com for home rentals, and established business divisions, each operating independently, for each of the three brands.
The new investment will be used mainly for the acquisition and development of new technology to allow mobile phone users to view augmented realty listings featuring nearby sights, restaurants, ATMs, subway stations, and other locations of interest through their phone-camera displays, and allowing users to tap on the icons for these locations to see more detailed information.
A spokesperson for Anjuke said that the company had an R&D team of about 100 people at present, and that the team is expected to double in size to nearly 200 by year's end. The total number of employees will also increase from more than 500 at present to nearly 1,000 by the end of the year.
Anjuke has not disclosed the source of the funds. The company had previously said that it would become profitable this year; business volume last year totaled in the tens of millions of RMB.
On the topic of when, exactly, Anjuke would list, Liang said that if conditions were right in mid-2011, Anjuke would attempt to seize the opportunity, and that the company will undertake an assessment in Q4 of this year.
Keywords: statistics registered users Liang Weiping Internet IPO online real estate Anjuke R&D HR
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