According to internet research company Iresearch, the total value of business generated online in China has reached a whooping 385 billion yuan, or about 60 billion US dollars, last year. This is double the amount seen in 2011, and was mainly driven by China’s online shopping boom.

The success stories of Chinese internet firms Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and the likes showcase a highly competitive, yet lucrative industry, where crowns are constantly exchanged. Our reporter Laura Luo talks to one such player in the game, who has given up his white-collar consulting job and stable life style to delve into the world of online adventures.

One ordinary day in the capital: thousands of Beijingers are elbowing their way into one of the world’s busiest subways. Among the commuters is Peng Tao. Just like other young passengers, he is playing with apps on his mobile phone to make the trip to work more entertaining.

However, what sets him apart from most of the other smart phone-savvy travellers is that he develops his own travel app.

And this is his destination. Blue sky, white clouds and grassland Peng is the founder of the light-hearted travel application . The brand name comes from a fairytale by the brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel, where two children were abandoned in the woods by their parents. But they spread bread crumbs along the way to find their way home, discovering a cottage built of gingerbread and cakes on the way.

Peng Tao, Founder & CEO, , said, "Our users can share photos with their friends, and write about their travel experiences. We also have a special feature called geo Tag, it can record locations you’ve been to on a map, and then replay it like a movie."

The Geo-tag feature does exactly what bread crumbs did for Hansel and Gretel: it maps out your way home, and leads keen-eyed investors to new-found treasure.

Peng Tao, said," Luckily we gained trust from investors, and now we are widely known in the market."

Trust is essential in an economic downturn. The one-year-old app has quickly snapped over 1.1 million users, registered 160 destinations countries, and was rated the best app of 2012 by Apple’s app store. Peng is optimistic about the company’s future, but the reality sometimes bites.

Peng Tao, said," We had tough times with investments, 3 months ago we could only afford a 30-square-metre studio. Our 11 staff members couldn’t even all be in the office at the same time."

In 2012, funding in U.S. dollars got squeezed as many venture capital funds -- the main cash source for Chinese internet startups -- stayed on the sidelines.

Peng Tao, said," Last year was a capital winter. We approached several VCs last year, we talked with many of them for several months, but in the end they didn’t pull the trigger. They’ve become much more cautious Back in 2010, investors could invest in a group of entrepreneurs without an actual product. Just a rough idea would make them put money in."

Industry analyst Forest Lin says investment has cooled down due to several past internet bubbles. And the poor IPO performance has further scared away seed investors.

However, there is a deeper worry -- foreign investors’ confidence in Chinese firms are low.

Forest lin, Executive Director of M&AS, Tencent Industry Collaboration Fund, said, "They are always caution and worry abuot Chinese companies’ corporate governance, last year, this issue became worse, with muddy water and citron becoming more active for the Chinese stock, which created more doubt and cloud.”

Probably the most famous victim of this tumbling investor confidence was Chinese language education giant, New Oriental. Last year, Muddy Waters alleged that it was citing inflated accounting numbers, which caused its share price plunge by more than 30 percent.

Forest lin, said, "Many accusations was ungrounded, if you read into what they say. they are basically arbitraging information asymmetry between U.S and China. Given investors are already in doubts about Chinese firms, once they issue any warnings about these firms, investors would tend to believe what they say."

Others think the tech start-ups would be better-off listing on the Chinese mainland market instead of the U.S.

Richard Jiang, CEP of Prosperity Investment, said, "I think companies do not have to go listing in the U.S as China and HK IPO market are better than the U.S. 2 or 3 years ago Chinese tech firms’ P/E ratio in China’s start-up board was easily 40 to 60, while in the U.S they were only doing 15 to 20. There was big price difference there.”

For start-up companies like Breadtrip, the Chinese IPO market might still be out of reach. But for this young CEO, who travelled to 35 countries across 6 continents including Antarctica, only the sky is the limit.

Peng and his team are working hard, with hopes to bring back a hidden treasure, somewhere in the capital jungle.

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