'King of entrepreneurs' enters new arena

Sun Taoran, chairman of Lakala Group - China's biggest offline payment provider.

New growth engines

Although China's economic growth slowed down to a 13-year low of 7.8 percent in 2012, Lakala's business grew 171 percent during the period, amounting to 600 billion yuan, faster than its average annual growth over the past few years, according to Sun.

The transactions through Lakala, Sun said, may hit 1,000 billion yuan this year. The company plans to further strengthen its business expansion into second- and third-tier cities.

"Because we focus on the third-party payment industry, our business is not so vulnerable to the overall economy," he said.

Moreover, the company has been committed to only one thing in the previous eight years - installing Lakala's payment terminals in 200,000 convenience stores in 300 cities across the country, allowing more than 200 million people each month to pay credit card bills and public utility fees such as gas and electricity through their terminals.

"Since late 2011, we opened another two business lines to promote our business. Besides offering a convenient financial service, we entered into personal payments, merchant bills collections and user operations," said the chairman.

Lakala is now fully involved in the merchant bills collection service market and has innovated various point of sale products and services for small, medium and large merchants, most notably its "Collection Expert" and "Business Access" for micro and small merchants.

Meanwhile, Lakala has launched a series of personal card terminals with independent intellectual property rights, including Lakala MINI (domestic), Lakakey (PC card reader), and Koala (mobile card reader).

Its mobile card reader, for instance, has recorded a sales volume exceeding 3.5 million cards since its release, with client downloads exceeding 15 million cards.

For Zhang Meng, a researcher with Analysys International, Lakala's mobile card reader is a highlight in the mobile payment industry. And the company's growth has benefited from the integration of the different lines of business.

Industry statistics showed that Lakala ranked second in the mobile payment sector, behind Alipay.

"Currently, we are still mainly focusing on developing the domestic market, although some companies in India, Indonesia and Africa have contacted us," said Sun, adding there is still huge growth potential in the Chinese market.

The company's profits also grew at a similar pace. Although it hasn't made any profits so far because of its rapid business expansion and fast-growing investments, Lakala reached a monthly break-even point last year, Sun said.