VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Alibaba Pictures, Tencent Lead $360M Investment In Bona Film Group

The rising costs of labor and infrastructure are paving the way for more opportunities being created via the internet. The online-based ventures are growing up in China and also enhancing the efficiency of the traditional enterprises as well. Mobile internet is changing the way consumer market behaves in the world's second-largest economy. Initially, the technology innovation doesn't happen in a consumer market, but it takes place in the enterprise segment. The consolidation is very slow in the traditional Chinese business when compared to the western part of the world.

A group of wealthy internet entrepreneurs and investors in China are putting their money on NextEV, a rival to U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc.

The contest for Nokia's (NOK1V.HE) maps business has become a three-way race between German carmakers, a consortium including Uber and Baidu, and a third group including China's Tencent and Navinfo, people familiar with the process said.

Tencent Holdings Ltd said on Friday it would collaborate with International Business Machines Corp (IBM) on a new cloud software business for corporate customers, a marked departure for one of the dominant forces in China's consumer Internet industry.

Sinopec Corp will sell a 107.1 billion yuan ($17.5 billion) stake in its retail unit to a group of 25 Chinese and foreign investors, Asia's top oil refiner said in a statement on Sunday.

Santa Clara, US-based semiconductor chip maker Intel Corp shelled out $100 million to establish an innovation center in China to accelerate the innovation of smart equipment in the Asian country.

The initial public offering of microblogging platform Weibo has only sold 16.8 million shares instead of its expected 20 million share sale, reported TechCrunch.

Gurgaon, India-based e-commerce firm Ibibo Group purchased Bangalore-based online bus tracking and analytics startup YourBus for an undisclosed sum to integrate the latter's tracking function into its travel services.

The People's Bank of China has blocked Tencent Holdings Ltd and Alibaba Group from offering customers with virtual credit cards, according to a source interviewed by Bloomberg News.

Alibaba Group Holding will be buying a majority stake in ChinaVision Media Group Ltd in an $804 million deal, allowing it to access TV and movie content, Reuters reported.

Koos Bekker, the Chief Executive Officer of South Africa-based e-commerce and media giant Naspers Ltd, will be stepping down on April. He will be replaced by Bob van Dijk, Reuters reported.

Korea-based Kakao Corp, the company behind the highly-popular messaging and social app Kakao Talk, is readying for its initial public offering in May, BeSuccess reported.

In 2010, China has blocked American cloud storage service Dropbox for an unconfirmed reason, but last week, the Asian country has once again opened its access to Dropbox, according to Tech In Asia.

Shenzhen, China-based taxi app Didi Dache is reportedly raising $100 million in a Series C funding round from investors Citic and Tencent for the integration of a payment platform into the app.