NEW YORK, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Cango, a Chinese online car marketplace, rang the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) opening bell on Thursday in celebration of its initial public offering (IPO).

Cango, trading under the ticker symbol of "CANG", priced its IPO of 4,000,000 American depository shares (ADSs), at 11.00 U.S. dollars per ADS for a total offering size of approximately 44 million dollars.

Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs (Asia) are the joint bookrunners on the deal.

Cango started trading at 12.50 dollars per share on Thursday, climbing 13.64 percent from its pricing, and was traded at 12.51 dollars apiece around midday.

Zhang Xiaojun, Chairman of Cango, told Xinhua on Thursday that the money raised will be used in future technology research and offline marketing.

As an automotive transaction service platform, Cango had connected 37,667 registered dealers, 11 third-party financial institutions and 734,336 car buyers as of March 31, 2018, according to its filing.

Founded in 2010, the company booked 194 million U.S. dollars in sales for the 12 months ended March 31, 2018.

China's automotive finance market grew at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 32 percent from 2013 to 2016, according to Oliver Wyman, a third-party management consulting firm.