Molbase.com figures it has found the right formula for trading chemicals online.

Since launching in April 2011, the Shanghai-based international e-marketplace has grown to host some 7500 biopharmaceutical companies and 17,000 chemical companies as suppliers, the company says on its website.

Some 300,000 business buyers, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and ThermoFischer Scientific, shop the more than 8.8 million chemicals available at Molbase.com. Molbase says the monthly value of transactions on the marketplace exceeds 1 billion yuan (US$154.6 million).

Now it appears ready to invest in more growth.

The web portal’s parent company, Molbase Technology Co. Ltd., raised “tens of millions of U.S. dollars” in a round of Series C funding on March 18, according to a report in Deal Street Asia. The marketplace did not immediately reply to a question about the amount of funding or how it plans to use it. The company received $10 million in Series A funding in December 2013 and “tens of millions of dollars” in Series B and B+ funding in 2014 and 2015, according to CrunchBase. The latest round of funding was led by Sequoia Capital China and TBP Capital.

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Buyers can search for products on Molbase.com by a product’s molecular name or Chemical Abstracts Service number, or CAS. The American Chemical Society issues CAS numbers to every chemical substance recorded in open scientific literature. Buyers can also search for products by drawing a product’s chemical structure or substructure on an online sketch pad on the home page.

Once buyers register on the site, Molbase uses their profile information to recommend suppliers. Buyers located outside of China can also receive price quotes through the marketplace. Molbase provides suppliers on its portal logistics and international customs services. It declined to comment on the cost of these services.

In addition to offering an online shopping mall for chemical products, Molbase offers access to more than 40 million pieces of chemical compound data, including chemical structures, properties and safety information. “Molbase is dedicated to establishing a reliable and accurate database of molecular information and structures to serve the global chemical, pharmaceutical, custom synthesis, specialty chemicals, biomedical, and R&D industries,” the company says.

Molbase declines to provide its number of monthly unique visitors and customer inquiries. But web analytics firm SimilarWeb estimates 187,600 visitors now come to the site every month.

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Registration is free for buyers on the Molbase.com. Suppliers “pay for performance only” on Molbase.com, the company says on its website. It didn’t immediately respond to a question regarding how it figures pay for performance, but that phrase typically means that a supplier only pays a fee when a buyer makes a purchase or converts in some other way, such as by registering with a supplier.

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