Help Wanted: Zhaopin.com Rakes in Big Dough

Filed in archive Venture Capital on July 14, 2008

China's monstrous online job site, Zhaopin.com, got a shot of cash so huge recently that would make king kong blush.

PaidContent.Org is reporting that Zhaopin has received $110 million in venture capital funds - a mezzanine round of funding designed to get it through to an IPO in sometime 2010. Zhaopin translates from Mandarin as "help wanted."

Zhaopin has two main investors, both Australian, and the company relationships have become interesting.


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Seek Limited invested early and bankrolled about 41% of this round of funding. They now own a just under 43% of the Chinese company. Macquarie Capital coughed up almost 55% of this round of funding. Their overall stake in Zhaopin is now around 29%. Zhaopin has yet to make a profit, but it has a growing share in China's jobs market. The company is valued at around $200 million.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, Zhaopin has over 100,000 corporate clients that post job openings on the Zhaopin web site. That puts Zhaopin third in the China jobs and recruitment market at the moment - behind first place 51job Inc. and second place Chinahr.com; (Monster Worldwide Inc., the world's biggest Internet recruiting company, owns 44% of Chinahr, according to Bloomberg.)

The interesting aspect of the money triangle between Seek, Zhaopin, and Macquarie is that Macquarie Capital is also buying shares of Seek Limited in Australia, where Seek is a publicly traded company.