Qunar Baidu Deal Closes. How This Could Ripple Through Chinese Startups.
July 22, 2011 at 16:07 PM EDT
Chinese search giant Baidu's investment in Qunar officially closed this week, and the two teams are working on integrating Qunar's search results into Baidu's travel vertical now. I caught up with Qunar's CEO Chenchao Zhuang for his first Western interview about the deal to talk about what the deal means for the company and China's Web scene broadly. This $306 million deal is not only a big one in dollar amount, but it could represent a seminal turning point in the Chinese Web. Until now, Chinese Web companies have had a strong bias towards going it alone. Much like earlier eras in Silicon Valley, success is considered to be an IPO not an acquisition. But there's a lot of pressure on that to change, and most industry watchers feel it's just a matter of time-- and of course, price.