Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. led a $300 million Series D funding round for Chinese social shopping app Xiaohongshu, giving the platform a valuation of more than $3 billion, the South China Morning Post reported June 1.
Other investors in the startup, the name of which means "little red book" in Mandarin Chinese, include Tencent Holdings Ltd., GSP Ventures, GGC Capital, Genesis Capital, Tiantu Capital, Zhen Fund and K11 Art Foundation founder Adrian Cheng.
Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu plans to put the funding toward "talent acquisition, machine-learning infrastructure and user growth," the SCMP reported, citing a company statement.
Founded in 2013, Xiaohongshu had more than 70 million users as of October 2017, according to its website. Its users, most of whom are between 18 and 35 years old, share photos and videos as well as post reviews related to beauty, fashion, travel, food and entertainment. They can also tag items in their posts that link to e-commerce listings.
