Beijing – IBM today announced that Chinese startup, Lingtu, a leading provider of digital mapping and location-based services increased its customer base by 30 percent in one year since partnering with IBM's corporate venture capital group. IBM's worldwide sales, marketing and technical support, has enabled Lingtu expand its reach to markets beyond China, with a Linux-based solution.
Beijing-based Lingtu has emerged as a leader in the exploding location-based services market. Lingtu partnered with IBM to build an open standards-based infrastructure on IBM technology to support its nationwide location-based applications. Their offerings include capabilities such as personal navigation systems, mobile navigation and location-based services, online map search and local search, including the most comprehensive map database in China.
With the growing popularity of open source technology in China, Lingtu worked with IBM to enhance its product portfolio by adding Linux-based solutions. This move enabled Lingtu to expand its customer reach outside of China as open standards is increasingly becoming a more relevant platform in global markets. This transition alleviated Lingtu from the challenge most organizations face offering solutions built on propriety platforms that limits the flexibility and choice for solution providers to go beyond their existing markets, and enabled them to quickly port their products to a wide variety of mobile platforms including PDAs, Smartphones, and WAP-enabled phones.
Founded in April 1999, Lingtu is one of the fastest growing location-based service providers in China, with key customers that include: China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, and Beijing Capital Info. A recent report by ABI Research estimates that the global location-based market is expected to grow at 52 percent compound annual growth rate, from the current of $981 million to $8 billion in four years.
Joint Customer Success with China Unicom
With support from IBM's sales consultants, Lingtu won a contract to supply its location-based services (LBS) software platform and geographic information systems to China Unicom in five provinces (Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Yunnan). As a result of leveraging Lingtu and IBM's joint solution, Lingtu has increased its wireless telecom related revenue from several hundred thousand Yuan Ren Mi Bi (RMB) to over 20 million RMB (2.5 million US dollars) since the implementation of the solution.
Lingtu is funded by Gobi Partners, a close partner in IBM’s venture capital network. Gobi Partners, a Shanghai-based venture capital firm focused on early stage investment opportunities in China’s digital media sector and emerging markets, introduced Lingtu to IBM.
As part of the collaboration, IBM worked with Gobi Partners and brought in IBM's Venture Capital Group and technology experts to help Lingtu stay ahead of its competition -- from collaborating on technical evaluation to business roll out. Today, Lingtu continues to work with technology experts and researchers at IBM's China Research Laboratory to co-develop for joint customers various mapping data solutions for business analysis applications.
"The partnership with IBM offers us a strategic advantage and has helped drive our business significantly not only within China, but has helped expand our reach in global markets like Europe and Japan, through the support of IBM's technical experts, global sales and marketing network. Our collaboration with IBM has also given us greater credibility with our clients, helping us deliver a superior value proposition in the market,” said Tang Ningzhe, CEO, Lingtu.
Venture-capital firms raised $4.07 billion last year worldwide to invest in China, which represents nearly five times the average of the previous three years, according to Zero2ipo Ltd., a Beijing research firm. As VCs are pouring more money into IT startups, IBM continues to tap into the booming venture capital market to build a collaborative ecosystem of VC firms investing in Chinese start ups as an engine to influence new areas of innovation.
"IBM' Venture Capital Group's unique partnership model has allowed us to collaboratively leverage the growing opportunity in emerging markets like China," said Lawrence Tse, Partner, Gobi Partners. "Lingtu’s success in the growing digital media space in China and outside markets exemplifies IBM's winning venture capital partnership strategy which looks at the venture community and its portfolio companies as an innovative ecosystem to ultimately meet market demand and drive customer success globally.”
Lingtu is a member of IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks program, IBM's key technical, sales and networking program helping business partners develop end-to-end technology solutions, help them with routes to market and validate their business for new customer engagements.
The Impact - Winning Mindshare
Today, IBM works with more than 120 of the world's top VC firms to identify emerging technologies and nurture potential startup partners. Business partnerships account for one-third of the company's revenue. IBM is working with nearly 250 venture capital-backed startups in China alone, giving them access to IBM technology expertise, routes to market, and joint customer engagements. Lingtu joins IBM's Venture Capital partnership network, which has grown to more than 1000 VC-backed startups in the last 20 months worldwide. More than 20 of the top China VCs strongly endorsed IBM's platform to their portfolio companies including Gobi Partners, MINT Capital, Walden International, and others.
IBM’s Venture Strategy Unique in the Marketplace
In 1999, IBM made a strategic decision to exit the applications business. IBM realized early on that building an ecosystem of partners working together rather than in competition -- would be essential to its continued success in the marketplace. As part of this strategic shift, IBM formed the Venture Capital Group (VCG) in August 2000. The VCG is a skilled team of IBM professionals dedicated to engaging the venture capital community a key driver of innovation in the marketplace.
While most corporate venturing strategies are focused on financial investments, IBM has adopted a unique strategy that focuses on relationships over direct investment. The leading VCs gain insight into IBM's vision and strategy and the opportunity to create profits from their investments into their portfolio companies. The startups are gaining access to IBM technological expertise, routes to market, greater validation of their solutions. And most of all, IBM is getting a front row seat to partake the best technologies that can only lead to faster and more innovative solutions to help customers transform their business operations and gain a competitive edge in their markets.
About Lingtu
Founded in 1999 and with more than 640 employees, Lingtu is the largest integrated digital mapping and location-based services company in China. Leveraging its proven software technologies and China’s most comprehensive digital map library, the Company offers location-based services to enterprises and consumers using different devices and platforms including PCs, mobile handsets, smart phones, and telematics devices. Lingtu has been working closely with China’s telecom carriers which are implementing location-based services to increase data revenues. Lingtu’s Internet site, http://www.51ditu.com, is a leading local and map search portal in China which offers point-of-interest content, enhanced search capabilities, and premium applications.
About Gobi Partners
Gobi Partners is a Shanghai-based venture capital firm focused on early stage investments in China’s digital media sector. Gobi defines digital media as a new form of communication emerging from the convergence in telecommunications, media and technology. Gobi invests in companies that are pushing the frontier, integrating gaps or enabling consolidation within the digital media value chain.