On-demand laundry service Edaixi, which is operated by laundry franchise Rongchain and backed by Tencent, has raised series A funding, four months after its seed round.

Crowdsourced delivery system Renren Kuaidi, which lets it users sign up to be a courier, has raised $15m in a series A round featuring internet portal Tencent.

The Qualcomm and IDG-backed smartphone maker, which made a $566m profit last year, also plans to invest $1bn to boost its online video content.

Collaborating with Southampton University, Nanyang Technological University opens a new institute consisting of five research centres focused on photonics and optics.

Car lending platform PPzuche.com has raised $60m in a series B round featuring IDG Capital Partners that will be invested in market expansion.

Corporate JV Bharti Softbank has acquired a 36.5% stake in media company ScoopWhoop through BSB Portal, which is also backed by Yahoo.

Stratoscale, a software company for data centres, has attracted $32m in a series B round which involved Intel, Cisco and SanDisk.