Car rental platform Wukong (Sun Wukong or Monkey King, leading character from classic Chinese novel Journey to the West) announced on June 13 that the company has received millions of yuan in its series A round funding completed last month. 

Bojing Capital was the lead investor, and it was joined by Zhen Fund and a private investment fund of Qihoo 360’s cofounder Hongyi Zhou and his wife Huan Hu, according to Wukong’s CEO Xianhe Hu. 

Wukong completed four rounds of capital injections in less than two years, including the angel round in February 2015, an angel+ round in April 2015, a pre-A round in December 2015, and the latest A round.   

Mr. Hu said that the company initially managed a vehicle fleet owned by the company in a model modified from traditional car-rental format, with credit ratings for users. The company now works with small and medium car-rental companies using a franchise model to offer business-end services.  

Mr. Hu projected that in the next 10 years, China would need a car rental fleet of nearly 10 million vehicles to meet demand, significantly more than the current fleet of half a million cars, and the market would be worth around RMB 1 trillion. He believed China’s car rental market in 10 years would be dominated by at least five car-rental companies or platforms that could supply more than one million cars, and they would leave little room for small and medium rental companies to survive on their own. (Translated by Jerry)