BlueRun Ventures China has announced its rebranding as ‘Lanchi Ventures’. Separately, Taiwan-based lifestyle booking app FunNow has merged with TripAdvisor-backed Eatigo to expand its footprint in Southeast Asia.
BRV China rebrands as ‘Lanchi Ventures’ amid geopolitical tensions
BlueRun Ventures China, which has backed nearly 200 tech companies, has changed its English name to ‘Lanchi Ventures’.
Lanchi Ventures announced the name change on Wednesday to assert that its operations are independent of BlueRun Ventures (BRV), a US-based VC firm that earned a name for backing global payment firm PayPal.
Lanchi Ventures is the latest among China-focused VC firms that want to decouple from their Silicon Valley lineage amid the ongoing geopolitical tensions.
The move came a few months after the Chinese arm of Sequoia Capital, previously known as Sequoia Capital China, went solo under the new “HongShan” brand as part of the US-based VC giant’s decision to split into three independent entities.
Jui Tan, managing partner of Lanchi Ventures, expressed concerns over the slowing growth in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) sector due to US chip export restrictions.
In a July interview with the Alibaba-owned media firm South China Morning Post, Tan said that China’s AI development could be challenging in the short term, as the US ban on the exports of advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) has “scared some people away”.
Lanchi Ventures, which has managed over $2 billion through multiple USD and RMB funds, said in a statement that the firm has been running independently from BRV since 2010. Its foundation in 2005 marked the official entry into China by BRV, which was established in 1998. With offices in Beijing and Singapore, Lanchi Ventures has backed companies such as the EV brand Li Auto, cloud computing firm QingCloud, used car trading platform Guazi, and industrial cleaning robot maker Gaussian Robotics.
Taiwan’s FunNow merges with Eatigo to expand SEA reach: report
FunNow, a Taiwan-based on-demand lifestyle booking app, has merged with TripAdvisor-backed restaurant booking platform Eatigo to expand its footprint in Southeast Asia.
The financial terms of the merger were not disclosed, according to a TechCrunch report on Tuesday quoting FunNow’s co-founder and CEO Ting-Kuan Chen.
FunNow and Eatigo apps will continue their separate operations, but the duo’s business operations will be combined post the merger. The deal will double FunNow’s revenue, said Chen.
As part of the deal, Eatigo is now a key shareholder of FunNow Group. Eatigo CEO Michael Cluzel will join FunNow’s board, while Chen will continue to be the group’s president and CEO.
“F&B (food & beverage) is quite an important sector for lifestyle and FunNow is a multi-category lifestyle platform,” Chen told TechCrunch. “We want to focus on and put more resources in F&B since it is the largest lifestyle category.”
Founded in 2015, FunNow serves 2.5 million users across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand. It uses a dynamic pricing strategy that allows businesses on its platform to offer different prices to customers based on supply and demand.
Its merger with Eatigo represents the startup’s latest deal in the industry. FunNow in 2020 acquired TABLEAPP, a provider of restaurant reservation and table management tools in Malaysia, for an undisclosed sum comprising cash and equity. In 2021, it made another acquisition by purchasing Taiwan-based Niceday, a booking platform designed for families with children.
FunNow has raised $22.5 million from investors since its inception, including the corporate venture arms of Taiwan’s e-commerce group PChome, travel startup KKday, and electronics manufacturer Wistron.
Eatigo was created in Bangkok in 2013 to offer yield management techniques to link 4,000 restaurants with customers during off-peak hours. Currently with 5 million users, it operates in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.