BV Capital

Company Description: Dating sites are quite popular these days as Chinese young adults are becoming more comfortable with forming friendships and relationships online. The top 3 dating sites (iPartment, love21cn and marry5) have a sub 1,000 ranking on Alexa and Match.com acquired another site, Edodo, last year. The top ranked site, iPartment (i is the phonetic translation of the Mandarin word for love) is a personal portal site that provides tools for individual expression and relationship building. iPartment first launched in Taiwan in 2003 and came to China in February of this year illustrating quite a rapid ascent in popularity. The site promotes favorable young men and women on the homepage and a new successful dating story is displayed with every refresh of the homepage.

What makes iPartment interesting is how the site has been able to successfully monetize itself with the sale of virtual items. This is where the apartment aspect ties in. Users create avatars (which, oddly, are only available with Western looks and features) and express their personality through the interior design of their “apartments”, a component of the personal portal. Apartments are For sale are furniture items and accessories, clothes for the avatar, pets and pet accessories, etc. Additionally, users can buy virtual gifts for other members they may want to get to know better. iPartment has had over 6.5 million visitors and almost 100K registered users.

iPartment has been invested in by Taiwan based IDT Ventures and Japanese firms JAIC and Cyber Agent.