Sina.com Gets $25 Million Capital Injection

Sina.com, a network of Chinese-language sites, has sewn up a $25 million round of financing from various investors including Walden International Investment Group, Goldman Sachs, Flatiron Partners, Crystal Internet, the Economic Development Bank of Singapore and other venture capitalists and private investors.

The Chinese portal network plans to use the capital to expand content and services, to build up its brand, and to provide a platform for major North American brands to target the global Chinese population.

“Sina.com intends to make its brand ubiquitous and synonymous with the Chinese Internet,” said Jim Sha, CEO of Sina.com.

“If AOL and Yahoo dominate today among the 500 million or so English-speaking population, Sina.com intends to be the #1 Internet brand among the 1.5 billion Chinese in the world,” added Sha.

“We have been a long-time investor in the growth of technology in China and Asia. We see tremendous momentum in the Chinese Internet market now, and believe Sina.com has the right combination of vision, focus, and management talent to maintain its strong leadership position,” said Lip-Bu Tan, chairman of Walden International Investment Group.

IDC projects the number of Internet users in China will reach 16 million in 2003 and users in Asia will number 59 million in the same year.

Sina.com claims to have 120 million monthly page views, 2.2 million unique visitors per month, and over 600,000 registered users.

The Chinese portal network started out with US$615,000 in investments, has had follow up investments totaling US$6.8 million, and has grossed US$1.13 million in revenues, according to IDC.

Sina.com’s network currently includes three major portals: Sina.com.cn for China, Sina.com.tw for Taiwan, and Sina.com for the overseas Chinese community worldwide.

Sina.com was created by the merger of two large Chinese Web sites: SINANET.com of Sunnyvale, Calif. and Stone Rich Sight Information Technology Company Ltd (SRS) of Beijing.