Chinese cloud storage provider Gokuai Technology it has raised $6.43 million in additional financing.
Chinese cloud storage provider Gokuai Technology announced on Tuesday it has raised $6.43 million in additional financing.
Founded just a year ago, Gokuai develops cloud storage and synchronization solutions that offer proprietary synchronization functions and document management capabilities.
This second round of financing follows Gokuai’s initial angel round of investment in May 2012, through Gobi Partners‘ Oasis Program.
Gokuai says it will use the new capital to expand its product portfolio and boost its marketing efforts, and ultimately help Gokuai “become the Box.net of China,” said Gokuai CEO Shuomiao Jiang.
Box.net has a comprehensive partner channel that includes service providers and web hosting providers, such as Rackspace and Google, but it remains to be seen if Gokuai intends on following Box.net’s lead.
The web hosting market in China has grown considerably in recent years, with more companies offering cloud computing services, including storage.
In August, EMC Corporation partnered with Chinese hardware maker Lenovo to expand its cloud storage reach in China, while cloud hosting provider Savvis launched virtual hosting services in the China market in November.
“Since the launch of Gokuai’s cloud storage platform, many enterprises have come on board, and registered users have already passed the one million mark,” said Jiang. “After being accepted into Gobi’s Oasis Program, we were quickly able to accelerate our product and business development initiatives. With highly positive market responses, we were then able to attract new investors for this latest round of financing.”
Gokuai differentiates itself from its cloud storage competitors by providing cloud storage solutions specifically for enterprise users that “aim to increase efficiency and management efficacy,” according to the press release.
The cloud storage provider also announced it will launch a “Mixed Cloud” product in the near future, which will be even more catered to enterprise needs.
Talk Back: Are you currently providing cloud storage solutions to your customers? Are you seeing a demand for these solutions? Do you think this new round of financing will help Gokuai successfully grow its business? Let us know in the comments section.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
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Interesting news but Im wondering with all these competition from dropbox etc. Can these providers really survive?
I think there are probably two ways in which competitors to DropBox (and Google Drive, etc) can survive. There’s the “DropBox is insecure, and therefore not fit for business uses” argument, which creates the potential market for a “business class” DropBox clone that includes certain security and administrative properties. There may also be a place in the market for a DropBox clone designed specifically to be hosted and delivered by service providers.