A business data search firm is bombarding China’s subways and business centres with ads. TianYanCha — literally SkyEye Search — has become the “go to” source for governments, consulting agencies, legal service providers, and media outlets who want to perform comprehensive business background checks.
TianYanCha was founded in March 2016 as a search platform focused on business enterprises, shareholders, and affiliate relationships. It has over 100 million registered users.
In January 2018 the company added a “Business Headline” feature to its app. With the help of machine learning and data mining, TianYanCha surveys more than 500 media entities and 1,000 outlet sources to provide users with relevant business information updates.
The basic application contains the public information of over 140 million Chinese enterprises. Users can select from more than 80 information metrics extrapolated from public government archives, including shareholder relationships, funding series, company development history, operating conditions and risks, administrative penalties, intellectual property, etc.
TianYanCha also provides data products to government and enterprise clients such as the People’s Bank of China, Chongqing Import & Export Credit Guarantee, Zhongzhao United, KPMG and JD Finance.
Company CEO Dr. Chao Liu is a former Microsoft researcher who earned his PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. Liu says that contrary to the belief that private data contains more useful information, “public data is the most valuable,” as it can detect and make sense of existing interrelationships. Lu says the company’s new business headline feature “will let users learn about the things they didn’t know that they didn’t know.”
TianYanCha raised US$18 Million in its March 2017 Series A round from China’s National Small and Medium-size Enterprises Development Fund; and US$3 million in its 2015 Angel Round from Tengye Ventures. Liu describes the company’s identity as “founded on technology and expanding on capital.”
Localization: Meiling Wu | Editor: Michael Sarazen
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