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Octopus has announced the completion of $95 million C round of funding.
The new investors for the round, Alipay parent Ant Financial and CCB International, will also participate in Octopus’s new S2B (Supply Chain Platform To Business) strategy.
Octopus, founded in 2012, is an online travel distribution platform that offers a wide range of products including short and long-haul domestic tours, outbound tours, free independent tours and cruises.
Currently, Octopus has 10 offices in cities including Wuxi, Anhui, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Qingdao, Xinjiang among others covering more than 40 departure points in China.
It plans to achieve nationwide coverage by 2020. The platform integrates more than 60,000 travel products, with nearly 2,500 suppliers and over 16,000 distributors in and outside of China. Its transaction volume in 2016 exceeded $715 million and it served 3.3 million users through various partners.
In March, Octopus launched "Longsnout Catfish", its first domestic long-haul brand featuring direct connection to destinations, ground mobility options and a real-time superior supply chain for resource integration.
The brand is seen as critical for the S2B initiative and has taken hold in 15 cities across China.
Octopus previously raised almost $24 million in its Series A round in November 2013, followed by $27 million in its Series B round in August 2016 from Tempus Global and other existing stakeholders.
Tempus invested RMB 50 million in exchange for a 4.17% stake in Octopus.