South China City, HK $175 million strategic investment Marco Polo net

South China City Holdings Limited and Marco Polo today jointly announced that the two sides have signed an investment cooperation agreement: South China City to invest in 22.5 million U.S. dollars (about HK $175 million) strategic investment in Marco Polo, accounting for 19.05%. The intention of this investment is: the two sides hope to carry out comprehensive cooperation in the field of online and offline integration, explore the possibility of O2O business services for small and medium-sized enterprises, and build the O2O ecological chain of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Marco Polo was founded in 2006, is China's leading business-to-business procurement trading platform, currently has more than 12 million registered users of small and medium-sized enterprises and more than 500 million product information database, forming a nationwide coverage of customer and product information network. In 2011, Marco Polo received a joint investment from Intel and LG Electronics funds. In the April 2013, Marco Polo also entered the field of Internet finance, providing third-party Internet financial services to users of its platform: in the process of purchasing transactions, a series of financial services such as financing, loans, factoring, clearing, bills and supply chain finance were provided for the enterprises.

South China City is a Hong Kong stock Exchange listed large integrated business logistics and commodity trading center operators, currently in the domestic eight provincial capitals and municipalities with substantial large-scale integrated business logistics and Commodity trading center, and has business-to-business and E-commerce platform "South China City Network", "Ole purchase." January 2014, the South China city was Tencent's strategic stake in the common development of "entity + Network" business platform. This June, the two sides signed a memorandum of cooperation to further implement the cooperation in E-commerce, including around the micro-trust platform, the South China City Network and OLE purchase business-to-business business cooperation, and intention to O2O service direction. South China City, the strategic investment Marco Polo, will further realize Tencent, South China City and Marco Polo tripartite to E-commerce as the core of the cooperative development.

Earlier, rumors that Tencent and Baidu will jointly invest in Marco Polo to counter the recent thunder of Alibaba, now appears to be false news. But Tencent did have a stake in Marco Polo through the indirect strategy of South China city.

After the strategic investment, South China City will carry some resources from Tencent, and Marco Polo in the following areas to explore the mutual win cooperation:

On the one hand, the South China city and Tencent around the micro-trust public platform, to create O2O line under the integrated Business ecological circle and other areas of strategic cooperation has begun to implement the landing; On the other hand, Marco Polo has developed a "Marco Micro shop" mobile platform. In the future, the two sides can establish a micro-business alliance based on the micro-credit public platform, realize the resource sharing of Tencent, South China City and Marco Polo in Small and medium-sized enterprises, and build the business ecological chain of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Nancheng has a nationwide coverage of large-scale integrated business logistics system, commodity trading center, as well as E-commerce platform, these online and offline business resources and Marco Polo's E-commerce platform in the procurement of the advantages of combining, it will be possible to jointly expand O2O business. On the one hand, for both sides, this will help to accelerate the South China city and Marco Polo under the line of service upgrades, for both the merchants to provide a richer value-added services; On the other hand, for small and medium enterprises, This will enable many of the Internet SME users on the Marco Polo platform to directly contact the small and medium-sized enterprises operating within the South China City project to create more business opportunities.

Through the Internet Financial Service system built by Marco Polo for 12 million SME users, South China City will explore and develop financial services for small and medium-sized enterprises, especially supply chain finance business, to help SMEs get richer, cheaper and more convenient financial services.

South China City's integrated logistics warehousing and merchandise display facilities will become Tencent, South China City and Marco Polo Strategic Cooperation Foundation support. On the one hand, Marco Polo's many merchants can make full use of South China City's integrated logistics warehousing and commodity trading center, on the other hand, the access of these merchants will further promote the business development of South China city.