Taiwan’s restaurant-rating website iPeen will receive investment of US$1 million from Japan-based CyberAgent Ventures Inc. to expand its online presence, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs April 28.
Currently iPeen sees as many as 6 million visitors monthly, and provides information on 80,000 restaurants, iPeen CEO Ho Chi-hung said.
“With this deal, we plan to add 40,000 more eateries to iPeen by the end of the year and double our staff,” he said.
Alice Fang, CyberAgent general manager for Taiwan, said, “This decision is based on the website’s operational performance, as well as the general acceptance of the user-pays principle in Taiwan.”
“We anticipate injecting funds of US$1 million to US$2 million in at least one Internet-related Taiwanese firm each quarter,” she added.
The investment was mediated through the MOEA’s New-Generation Innovative Service Incubation Plan, which has provided support for 117 firms, including the map-based blogging company Atlaspost.com and Nexdoor Inc.’s iFans marketing applications site.
MOEA officials said the incubation plan aims to stimulate the development of online businesses and take advantage of their spillover effects to upgrade the services provided by traditional industries. (THN)
Write to Aaron Hsu at pj1210meister@mail.gio.gov.tw