58.com's O2O venture gets $300m series A financing

An advertisement of Chinese online classified advertising website 58.com is seen on a bus in Guangzhou city, South China's Guangdong province, April 12, 2015. [Photo/IC]

BEIJING - Local classified site 58.com announced on Monday $300 million in financing from Alibaba, KKR and Ping An Ventures.

NYSE-listed 58.com founded Daojia in September last year, an online-to-offline (O2O) platform connecting users to a broad range of services including manicures, car washing and babysitting in over 30 cities in China.

A 58.com statement said that it still retains the majority of Daojia's shares after its subsidiary's series A financing, which values the O2O platform at 1 billion dollars.

Alibaba's rivals Tencent and Baidu have their own O2O ventures, offering everything from restaurant reservations and hotel bookings to ride-sharing and ticketing.

Two O2O firms, Meituan and Dianping, backed separately by Alibaba and Tencent, announced a merger last week that values the new company more than 15 billion dollars.