Image Search Engine Taotaosou Wins USD 20 Mln Funding
CCID, 6/20/13
Hangzhou-based Taotaosou.com, an image search engine for e-commerce, announced today that it received more than USD 20 mln in second-round funding from investors including Hangzhou-based C2C & B2C e-commerce site Taobao, CDH Investments, and DT Capital Partners.
Taotaosou offers image-based product search, allowing users to upload images (or submit image URLs) of clothing that strikes their fancy in order to find similar products online. The company offers a browser plugin, "Taotongkuan" (literally, "select the same model"), that lets users hover their mouse cursor over an image to conduct a Taotaosou search for similar products. Taotaosou plans to release a mobile app in July that will allow users to search for similar products using their cameraphones.
At present, Taotaosou has listings for nearly 120 mln online products, covering virtually all of Taobao's apparel product offerings. The site adds several million new SKUs per day, and receives over 10 mln daily search requests. According to CEO Jian Cong, Taotaosou's goal is to solidify its grasp on the product image search market, and to expand into other image search markets should the opportunity present itself.
Editor's Note: For more background on this topic, please see "Rumor: Taotaosou Second-Round Funding to Reach USD 10 Mln," MD 11/10/10 issue.
Keywords: vertical search VC Jian Cong e-commerce Taobao Internet funding image search CDH Investments DT Capital second-round Taotaosou online search
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