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Search - Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Chinese Online Travel Search Engine Qunar.com Has Raised $10M

Beijing-based Qunar.com has raised $10M in a 2nd round. The investment in the Chinese online travel search engine was led by Lehman Brothers Private Equity and was joined by return backers GSR Ventures and Mayfield.

Qunar launched in 2005 and means “where are you going?” in Mandarin Chinese. The company was founded by Douglas Khoo, CC Zhuang, and Fritz Demopoulos who had founded and sold the CSEEK search engine to News Corporation and founded and sold the Shawei.com portal to The Tom Group.

View - Reuters CEO video

Qunar provides a price comparison engine that leads users to transactions. Qunar makes most of its income from advertising fees.

Qunar competes with Ctrip (CTRP) and eLong (LONG) but analysts predict that it will grow 40%-50% year-over-year for the next couple of years. Qunar has been developing partnerships to get into the Japanese and Korean markets.

Qunar expects to break even consistently in 2008, it has at times broken even. It says it may seek an IPO listing in 2010 or 2011, either in Hong Kong or on the Nasdaq.

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