BEIJING, Nov 06, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — CERNET Koncept Ltd., the holder of exclusive rights to provide digital media services and advertising to China’s university students, have recently closed a US $6.5 million Series A round with Sequoia Capital to expand their next generation media services to Chinese Campus Channel and allow advertisers a unique new media channel to effectively reach youth in China.

Established in 2007, CERNET Koncept is a joint venture between CERNET (The China Education and Research Network, which is itself a cooperative between the Ministry of Education and Chinese Government) and Koncept Group, Ltd. (a developer and provider of digital media platform, content and marketing). This joint venture provides a large scale communications, educational and entertainment services to Chinese universities, which is now open to advertisers as a way of reaching this valuable youth audience.

“CERNET Koncept has a first mover opportunity to deliver quality services to the millions of Chinese Students on the CERNET network,” said Shauna Xie, Vice President with Sequoia Capital China. “Advertisers are now able to target their spending more effectively to reach this large audience.”

“With the support of Sequoia Capital, we are now able to expand our Communications, Educational and Entertainment offerings to our users,” said Kuang Peng, CEO of CERNET Koncept, Ltd. “Advertisers now see the value of our complete mixed media platform to reach this important demographic.”

CERNET is a private Intranet that runs across China reaching 2000 universities and more than 27 million Chinese students. As well as its primary role in providing educational material, CERNET Koncept provides value added services including an instant messaging service, communication services, a social networking site and access to large amounts of entertainment content available to students only from the Cdream platform. This platform is now available for advertisers to reach this coveted audience.

A research conducted by Sinomonitor International in 2007 shows that, every university campus student’s average consumption spend is 11,860 Yuan per school year; Total annual university student consumption is nearly 300 billion RMB. The Chinese University Campus has become the battleground for all marketers and business to capture this valuable demographic and future economic engine of China.

ABOUT CERNET KONCEPT
CERNET Koncept Network, Ltd. is a joint venture between CERNET (Chinese Educational Research Network) the owner and operator of China’s largest University private voice/data network, and Koncept the developer and operator of the Cdream Digital Media Platform. Cdream is an integrated advertising and marketing platform that delivers advertiser supported Communications, Entertainment and Educational Content through Shutter, the free PC application for Students. Cdream Union also aggregates the more than 1,600 University BBS sites for targeted and segmented advertising, and the Cdream Team provides national on campus marketing. CERNET connects nearly 2,000 Universities and 30 million Students and Faculty and Cdream is China’s only integrated advertising and marketing.