Kuaishou’s founder & CEO Su Hua Cheng Yixiao recently shared that its international user base had expanded to 1 billion. Kuaishou is a Beijing, China-based short-form-video app that focuses on “live” streaming; users are encouraged to “tip” creators by buying virtual gifts from the app & sending them to their favorite influencers.
Creators often sell their own products during these streaming sessions, with the most notable personality on the platform, Xinba, generating as much as US $300 million in a 12-hour session (more than what the average mall in Hong Kong generates in a year). Also, it’s interesting to note that he managed to achieve this despite a 60-day ban imposed by Kuaishou for previously allegedly selling fake products to his fans.
Launched as an animated image sharing app in 2011, Kuaishou quickly evolved into a video sharing platform offering both short-form videos & live streaming. In 2017, it became the largest revenue generating live streaming app – mostly as a result of its virtual gifting model.
In February 2021 the company went public on the Hong Kong stock exchange & saw its share price double in a few days. The company has its sights set on expanding outside of China & has seen success with its foreign apps namely Kwai & SnackVideo apps, which have about 150 million users combined.
The company is actively looking at expanding in the South America & South-East Asian markets, where its major rival is ByteDance, the company behind Tik Tok. In China, its biggest rivals are Douyin, Bilibili & WeChat – which also boasts 1 billion users, & is encouraging short-form-video. Douyin has around 600 million daily active users, while Kuaishou trails at 295 million, but its numbers are growing steadily, especially in foreign markets where it was the most downloaded app on both the Google Play & Apple App Stores in 8 different countries in 2020.
Image credit: Kuaishou
