Dianping raises $100mln at $1bln valuation, postpone IPO plan

Dianping announed today that it’s raising a new US$ 100 million round of funding across four funds that values the company at US$ 1 billion valuation. The funds include Trust Bridge Partners, Sequoia Capital, QiMing Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Dianping is a popular social rating site (like Yelp), covering 2,000 cities in China, with more than 1 million local business on its website, monthly active visitors of over 30 million and over 20 million ratings and reviews on those business. According to Dianping CFO Ye Shuhong, Dianping turned profitable in 2008, with annual revenue growth of over 200% year on year since. Management expects the company’s 2011 profit to be 5 times greater than that of 2010’s RMB 200 million (US$ 30.6 million).

Dianping CEO Zhang Tao said that the company decided to put off its scheduled IPO in 2011, he believes that there are some new business models emerging with untapped market. Going public too soon would put the management team under earnings pressure, which might stifle development of new business.

Dianping is in hopes of combining Yelp, Groupon and Foursquare models to form a comprehensive online life services platform. Earlier we posted about its $800million valuation; with the new round of funding, it seems that Dianping will be reaching for even higher goals.

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