Letv’s smartphone unit ‘Le Mobile’ gets $ 530 million funding

Letv, the internet conglomerate which is ready for its entry into the Indian market, showcased a letter by its founder Jia Yueting to its employees, titled - “Master Yourself, Chase After Your Dreams and Become the Brightest Star”. In the letter Jia Yueting gives thanks to his staff members and states that the company will continue to promote its internationalization and globalization agenda. He also announced that Letv’s smartphone unit ‘Le Mobile’ has set a funding record in the industry, by completing its Series-A financing of USD 530 million, the biggest Series-A funding so far among Letv’s seven business ecosystems.

Further highlighting that as part of its global expansion plans, Letv will carry on with its strategy of B-L-S (Beijing-LA-Silicon Valley) and build its ecosystem across new and existing geographies like United States, India and Hong Kong. Jia Yueting also revealed information about the latest progress of the Super Car and a plan to introduce a new eco chauffeured car service in collaboration with yongche.com, which he said will disrupt the current e-hailing market landscape. Among Letv’s seven business ecosystems, Le Sports has achieved rapid development throughout the year and its recently-established Le Sports Venture Capital, in particular, stunned the industry. Jia Yueting disclosed in the internal letter that Le Sports will announce an even more stunning plan next month.

In the letter, Jia Yueting said that, what the world needs is not a second Apple, but a company that can truly break the rules set by Apple, and that’s exactly the mission of the Superphones as well as the starting point of Letv’s ecosystem strategy. Jia Yueting believes that Apple will be upended, not necessarily by Letv, but certainly by Letv’s ecosystem model.

Signalling the company’s people-centricity and its bid to attract top global talent , Jia Yueting announced in his letter “Letv allocates 50% equity of its unlisted assets to all staff members so that every employee becomes a true stakeholder of Letv and work in a truly enterprising spirit at Letv!” Jia Yueting believed that with all employees being shareholders and benefiting from the overall growth of the company, there will be stronger coordination among the various business units. For example, in addition to owning shares in the company where they work, employees of Le Sports, Le Mobile, and Letv Cloud also have shares in Le Holdings. This arrangement is meant to promote coordination and synergic interactions among the various sub-ecosystems. The Eco employee equity and global partnership scheme will lead a new era and become a benchmark of the industry.