Chinese Startups In News

On 12nd July, MediaTek whose phone chips  and “Turn-key”  (from chips to software design) solution has enabled hundreds of Chinese Shanzhai phone manufacturers to make phones easily, made an announcement saying that it joined the Open Handset Alliance and decided to play with Android market.

One month later, in a talk with a friend from MediaTek, I have been told that MediaTek has finished the development of its Android-powered 3G phone chip. “This will drag the Android phone price down to $100 or even less”, he said.

Interesting enough, yesterday the first MediaTek’s Android phone (T3333a) was spotted in Shenzhen’s Shanzhai market. The rumor also revealed its specs, Android 2.1, Dual-Sim supported, RAM 256M+ROM 512M.

With the strong connection with Shanzhai phone manufacturers, will we see MediaTek repeats another success in Chinese phone market? and will Android eventually become the replacement of Shangzhai’s phone OS? There is possibility, but we have to note that the Chinese mobile market is changing rapidly.

1. The smart phone market has been re-defined. Nokia is still there, together with the ‘closed’ Apple’s iPhone and the tens of ‘open’ Android supporters (brands include Lenova, HTC etc).

2. Educating the millions of Shanzhan users could be challenging? Touch screen and multi-threads are fancy, but are they for geeks only? Would low-education and low-income Shanzhan users like it? Is Android too advanced beyond those users’ need?

3. Like Nokia, Motorola etc, most likely MediaTek will soon spend effort on its own Android application market. It would be a good news for Android application developers, but as a late comer in the hyped Chinese app store market and every app market operator is hungry for good applications and developers, MediaTek is mission might not be easy.

4. App store is also a game-changing strategy in mobile phone market. The strategy to operate the app stores will be the key to succeed. And whether the users could quickly accept the new ways of playing with apps is another question.

But one thing is for sure, Android phone market is growing superb fast and it will be the No.1 target for any parties in Chinese market.

[image via Gigjets]

Soon, you would see million of Chinese sites are Powered by Tencent (instead of Powered by Discuz!). Although the news has not been confirmed by both parties, it is today proved by the Whois information of Comsenz’s two domain: Comsenz.com and Discuz.net. Both domains are now registered under the name of Tencent Technology (Beijing) Company Limited.

If you do not know Comsenz, the development company of the most popular Chinese BBS system, Discuz, please read our previous coverage for more details. It is reported that ~80% Chinese sites are running its BBS and ~70% of the BBSs are built on Discuz system. Comsenz also developed some other free social software, such as UCHome with which you can easily set up a Facebook-like social network.

Tencent acquires Comsenz, in other words, Tencent is now officially connected with millions of local site owners which are in fact the core group of Chinese web market. Months ago, Alibaba acquired Comsenz’s competitor PHPWind to enter Chinese BBS space. Tencent’s movement on Comsenz does make sense.

What could we expect from this acquisition?

1. Soon, you would see million of Chinese sites are Powered by Tencent (instead of Powered by Discuz!)

2. All the search engine of the BBSs built on Discuz system will be powered by SOSO, Tencent’s search service.

3. BBS is always the most important social media channel, Tencent is now the ‘owner’ and might integrate its services such as QZone and even its microblogging service into the Discuz! platform;

4. All Discuz powered BBS can be login with QQ number; Technically, it might be a huge mission, but eventually, QQ number might become the truly ‘OpenID’ in Chinese web;

5. BBS where people always look for and exchange information about product, plays a very important part in Chinese e-commerce market. Will Tencent take advantage of Discuz! to promote its Paipai e-commerce platform, competing with Alibaba? Why not.

The rumor says the deal is valued at >$10million. It is definitely the highlight of China web 2010!

Sales of luxury goods grew 12% in 2009, to $9.6 billion, accounting for 27.5% of the global market, according to Bain & Co. In the next five years, China’s luxury spending will increase to $14.6 billion, making it the No. 1 luxury market globally. In 2009, China overtook the U.S. to become the world’s second-largest luxury-goods market, behind Japan. Roughly half of the luxury goods purchased in China are bought as gifts. (via AdAgeChina)

According to the latest (26th) report released by CNNIC, by June 2010, Chinese e-commerce users have reached 142millions and increased by 31.4% in past 6 months. Also via iResearch, the Chinese e-commerce transaction volume in Q1 2010 has hit rmb 1015.27 billion (~$150billion).

More and more traditional business see the huge potential from Chinese e-commerce, and some of the luxury brands see that too. Luxury industry in e-commerce, so can we find the perfect matching of both?

I was involved with a project consulting an international top luxury brand which is planning its e-commerce strategy in China. I am neither a big fan of luxury product, nor ever into the market. However, the experience of working with both a luxury brand and local e-commerce services was great. Here I want to share with you some of my finding which does not come with statistics by research but I hope you find it interesting as well as practical.

General Takeaways:

• Despite more and more business want to try out e-commerce, NONE of luxury brand is actively doing e-commerce in China.
• The market is very geographic. According to Taobao’s report, the TOP 5 e-commerce cities are Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou which generate ~22% transaction.
• Counterfeit issue in China has to be considered, especially for luxury market.
• Despite the e-commerce market is hot here, it is still NOT that mature. People are expecting more about cheaper price online.

e-Commerce in practice:

• Platform – think over whether to build the online platform on your own or go partner with the existing e-commerce platforms;
• Logistics – Efficiency, safety and reliability. Usually this can be easily solved with the partnership with other platforms;
• Payment – it’s not the difficult part usually as there are several payment gateway you can easily integrated into your own platform
• (Social) Marketing – the internet culture is very different in China, e.g. you need learn how to talk to local via old style – BBS (online forum) which is amazingly popular in China and you also need understand the power of new media, such as microblog. Do check Sina’s microblogging service which will be leading Chinese social media.

Build your own e-commerce platform:

• The advantage is that you have full control of your user’s profile which you can use for direct marketing, such as sending newsletter, data analysis etc;
• But can you legally do that in China? In order to run e-commerce in China, you may need a Chinese partner set up a JV, or do a WFOE structure;
• Understanding Chinese users’ online behavior is important. It is very different so it must be concerned when you design the UI/UX? Check out all those popular e-commerce sites, you will see the layout of each site is QUITE similar.
• And don’t forget that you yourself need deal with logistic which sounds easy as there are several logistic companies you can choose and the price is relatively transparent. But if you are a luxury brand, you don’t want your packaging damaged, got dirty etc when it arrives at your customers, right?

Work with third-party e-commerce platform:

• It’s the solution suitable for small/medium company. For sure, they will offer you a full package: user base and traffic, online e-commerce platform, logistics, even customer support via IMs, Call Center, email etc; then you just need decide on what product you want to sell online;
• But if you really care about your brand, make sure the platform the third-party provides can be fully customizable. Most of the existing e-commerce platforms can not offer you fully customizable design; they can only do with different templates; As a luxury brand, you don’t want to give your customer a Cheap looking, do you?
• For sure, the thirty-party wants some commission, probably per transaction basis; the rate could be varied, depends on what category of products you sell online.
• It’s a safe and easy strategy to start with your e-commerce: Partner with one big platform which can drive traffic and revenue for several years, in the meanwhile you can learn the market and plan your own e-commerce platform. Yes. That’s workable, but make sure that that partner allows you export all your customers’ data upon the contract expires.

Which platform is the best for the business?

• Taobao, well, yes, you can not ignore such a giant which takes ~80% Chinese e-commerce market share; Go talk to them and they have a good team which is able to deal with International brand.
• But Taobao is not everything. Especially for a luxury brand, it’s risky!! Keep that in mind, people come to Taobao for Cheaper stuff;
• There are several others you should check, such as MSN Shopping and Ule China for brands, 360buy and newegg for electronic product, dangdang for books and so on. They may offer you something which Taobao may not, e.g. more customizable platform.

(image from Replicastore)

This year, no matter what kind of discussion on innovation we have, it seems that people just cannot help but come back to a few key topics: microblogging, location-based services, group purchasing, the iPad, and mobile networks.

Thus, it’s not surprising that in the space of one year we’ve seen a massive explosion in group-purchase sites; portal-sponsored and grassroots microblog platforms; checking-in becoming both popular and fashionable; and people going crazy over the iPad. More and more development teams are moving towards mobile networks, and capital markets are seemingly moving towards backing Android as the number one choice for mobile network development.

People on the edge of innovation seem to agree that opportunities abound, even though they may be very well hidden – the key is just finding, exposing, and exploiting them. The problems that have to be addressed, however, are not few: how to judge these opportunities; how to cater to and fit into the conditions they come with and create; how to forge one’s own path; how deal with violent competition; how to stand out from the crowd; and how to deal with risk and changing market conditions.

In this issue, we’ll explore how these major factors affecting development of the mobile network market within China, and at the same time introduce the domestic microblogging scene and its state of development. We’ll take a peek at the iPad and the development opportunities it presents for us, and through these themes showcase the directions in which innovation is proceeding in China.

You can now download the Chinese version and English version.

Back to May 10, 2009, I asked Mr. Zhang from a Japanese investment company, CyberAgent for his opinion on microblogging service. (read the full coverage in Chinese). He said he understood the real-time information generated by this type of service would be very valuable data, but he doubted that most of the Twitter-like startups would have enough resources to survive till they can really deal with the massive real-time data.

So no chance for startups in Chinese microblogging market?! I agreed with Zhang at that time, but we both forgot another key factor, the regulation from the government. Fanfou is gone, Jiwai was not lucky, Digu is alive but has tuned its strategy to focus more on LBS and Social games, sadly, another early adopter, Zuosa is now looking for buyer. In an email from Alex, founder of Zuosa, he told us the team is lack of funding and resources and therefore the only choice left for him is to sell it.

Alex told me Zuosa had over 160K users, 35K daily independent IP. It supports the IMs including MSN,Gtalk,MSN and QQ, and has a couple of phone clients on iPhone,Android, BlackBerry, Java and WAP. Several desktop clients for Windows,Linux and Mac are available too. It’s also interesting to know that in a report on the global microblogging market from QQ.com, Zuosa is even ranked 5, right after Twitter, Plurk, Digu and Sina.

Is it a sad story after Zuosa’s years’ trying in Chinese microblogging space? You might think it is. But reading from the replies to Alex’s open letter, most of them said: it’s kinda of RELEASE.

Please, if you are interested in talking to Alex, please ping me and I will do the intro. Whatsoever, 160k users are priceless, for sure.

Over the past four years, the prominent bilingual tech blog MOBINODE has striven to provide insightful, detailed coverage of the Chinese IT sphere and its newest stars. With the introduction of MOBINODE.tv in 2009 and the NTALKS forums this year, we’re by no means just a blog, and we do cooperate with other popular local tech blogs and grassroots movements to bring together innovative, passionate, hardworking individuals for various causes and colloquia.

MOBINODE is growing, slowly but steadily. It started with an individual media with exclusive English, Chinese and video contents, then thanks to NTalks events it is one step closer to be a hub and a platform for local startups, experts, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Now, with the support from our respectable partners, we are very exciting to announce that the Startups Watch, a report focus on local industry analysis and startups. This report will be produced monthly and available in both English and Chinese version.

Startups Watch report

Our colleagues and friends are people who truly love the internet, and who are willing to share and contribute. Therefore, we work hard to bring them out and together to record their opinions, views, and innovations in the name of progress. With Startups Watch report we hope to:

1. highlight the most valuable content and opinions from local non-mainstream independent tech bloggers.
2. explore the local web industry and highlight the best newly founded startups
3. provide overviews and anaylsis on the hot and new sectors in Chinese web industry.
4. bring innovators, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to the forefront to spark both conversation and original thinking.

Startups Watch (1st Issue) [free download: English version | Chinese version] - In this issue, we’ll be summarising the situation of the Groupon-like-services and Foursquare-like services sectors in the Chinese market, as well as the penetration of the iPhone and Android-based devices into China. In our startups recommendation section, we’ll be touching upon 9 different companies that have come online within the past month in China, or sites or services in China that have recently come to the forefront. In the recaps section, we’ll be talking about the internationalization of the development process.

This month’s Startups Watch is edited by MOBINODE’s Gang LU, Cindy Jiang, and web20share’s Watson Xu. Thanks to our translator Moy Hau. It is our first try, so please do contact us for any feedback and suggestions.

Partners: OrangeLabs Beijing, BlueRun Ventures and TrilogyVC

We believe MOBINODE networks’ strength is that it has been in touch with the local industry for years and understand the truly local web; and it also has the advantage of great international connections which give us the opportunities to be a super hub connecting local web with oversea market as well as foreign fund. We want to contribute more to help on the local ecosystem. We’ve been trying for a long while, and now big thanks to our partners (Orange Labs Beijing, BlueRun Ventures, TrilogyVC), with their support and sponsorship, we are able to do more and grow faster!

More to Come…

With the cooperation with local tech bloggers, we are also working on some other exciting projects aiming at local startup ecosystem. Please stay tuned.

CampusFork.com features seductive and compelling restaurant food photos that offers a unique experience for prospective diners and marketing opportunities for restaurateurs. Rayfil Wong, an American Born Chinese San Francisco native, created CampusFork by fusing elements of HotOrNot.com with Flickr.com, allowing users and restaurant owners to upload provocative food images. Wong, who describes himself as an “accidental” entrepreneur, discovered love through his unique food porn concept. “I found that a great way to ask a girl out on a date was to entice her with food,” he says. How? He sent photos of sushi and a message: “Let’s grab Sushi this Friday.” This immediately piqued her interest – in both Wong and his innovative Web site, CampusFork.com.

A San Francisco native, Wong self funded CampusFork.com in his bedroom with only $6,000 in savings.  Today, he remains the sole full time
employee and has bootstrapped the company through self funding from both savings and bartering services.  More importantly, Wong outsourced all of his Web development needs to a virtual team of five in Romania, whom he has never met in person.  Most food photos are from international cities such a San Francisco, New York, and Hong Kong but have extended to over sixty cities.

If you’ve ever seen a picture of 小笼包 (xiao long bao) and then started to crave it (I know I have!), you’ve been aroused by food porn. CampusFork.com is one of the first websites to provide patrons with these seductive, realistic restaurant food photos to help them select where and what to eat. “A picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more true, since photos give the Web site users a visual clue about ingredients, portion size, and food presentation, which helps them make choices.

CampusFork not only benefits “foodies” but also restaurants. Simply by uploading quality food pictures, restaurant owners can gain free marketing exposure and have their restaurant food photos be submitted to search engines. This is a simple, effective, and free solution to entrepreneurs’ marketing needs. One significant drawback to small, local, traditional and/or ethnic restaurants is the lack of high quality images of the food offered. Often I run go to local restaurants in Puxi where I depend on my local Shanghainese friends to help me order the best dishes since I don’t speak Shanghainese nor fully understand the menus. Chinese names of food don’t exactly translate well into English. With CampusFork, I can just walk into a restaurant and point to the pictures of the food I want to eat on my smartphone. CampusFork can be my online menu for local restaurants where I may be at a disadvantage to ordering the best dishes!

“Photos speak a thousand words and can sometimes land you more than just a good meal idea,” Wong said, thus showing us that CampusFork.com is not just a great marketing tool, but a great social tool as well.

A few days, invited by Slide.com Shanghai, I had a great pleasure to have the chance to interview with Max Levchin, who co-founded Paypal in 1998 then sold it to eBay for more than $1.5 billion at the age of 26. Now he is the CEO and visionary behind Slide.com, the largest social entertainment company in the world and developer of the most engaging applications on social networks.

The interview took only 20min or so, but it covers different topics, such as Slide, Slide China, geek culture, spirit of geeks, view on Chinese startup environment, how geeks should do business etc.

The following is the highlights. (Note: part of the interview will be co-published on Founders magazine in Chinese.) Hope you will enjoy it. At least for me, it’s very very inspiring.

1. You co-founded Paypal which is something really changed the world; Now you have Slide, do you think it can make something really big again?

- Yes. Social game and virtual currency, I think they will be very popular. Slide is to build a powerful platform for this and for the change of our life.

2. You co-founded Paypal, sit at the Chairman of the board of Yelp.com, and now Slide.com is quite successful as well. You are a great Entrepreneur, but do you think you are still a geek?

- Yes. Once a Geek, Forever a Geek.

3. So in your mind, what’s the spirit inside a Geek.

- It’s all about Curiosity. If you are in the business to make money which is your primary motivation, eventually you will get boring. Because once you have a lot of money, it becomes that all the interesting things are to make money ; But if you are in the business to learn, you will never run out of interest because there are always things to learn and you never learn everything. So as a result, curiosity is the spirit of geek in my opinion.. That’s why I started my companies, I am always curious about something. I am curious about money, I started Paypal; I am curious about self-expression, I started slide.com.

4. About American Geek culture

- First of all, I think there are many geeks in China, not just in America. The reason that people think many geeks in US start companies is that they did so before other geeks started. They are smart and curious, they think they can do whatever they want.. So people have seen some very successful examples from U.S.

5. About Chinese Geeks

- For China, I think it’s just a time of time. There are and there will be more geeks like engineers started the companies and make it very big..
- Max asked, wasn’t Alibaba started by a geek? I said the founder is an English teacher. Then Max said, I think that’s also pretty geeky!
- in 10 years, I am sure you will see more companies started by geeks not just business people

6.  Advice on how geeks should do business

- I think real geeks end up of curious about and interested in everything..
- when I started my company. I knew nothing about business and I only knew how to code. I just wanted to make something that others will use. And we built a few products but many of them failed.
- Then I started question myself why they were failing. I realized that I was making things for me. I was a geek and my needs is not the needs for the general public. So at some points, I told myself, I need make things for normal people not just for geeky people. So I made the change and it works;
- But I think it’s not difficult to learn about this (experience), it just took a few round of failing. I think once you start the company, you will get it.
- I believe geeks can do business which is already proved, although I know there are some people might not agree on that.

7. Chinese startup environment

- For Chinese environment, it is not something I am superbly familiar with.
- I heard that the investment environment in China can be difficult because there are a lot of regulation from the gov, and not very good terms for the entrepreneurs
- I think typically it’s a matter of time. Initially, you start with bad environment, but as long as the market grows,  very quickly you will see this environment is improved, e.g. more money comes in, more incubators, more investors etc, then things will get better.
- I am generally optimistic on this.

8. About Investment

- I invested in diverse area, no particular investment focus..
- I only invested in Silicon Valley which I am familiar with.
- Mobile will be be huge. in the past 10 years, people thought mobile would be huge but it didnot happen. Now it’s finally happening. Slide will focus more on mobile in next 2 years.

9. Geeks change U.S?

- It’s probably true to say Entrepreneurs change U.S.
- The most important component of any community is entrepreneurs, because they ultimately push change forward in a discontinuous way,
- The entrepreneurship is a very powerful force in creating value for any country, so I think american entrepreneurs have made the difference. If you look at the time around the beginning of 20′s century when the power shifted from Europe to U.S. All the best invention and greatest ideas were happening in America. And most ideas were built by entrepreneurs; or at least most ideas are led by academics but commercialized by entrepreneurs.

10. Suggestion to local geeks.

- Follow your curiosity. Try lot’s of things. Don’t be afraid of trying things.
- It’s all about finding out how things work.

11. About Slide.com Shanghai

- We set up our Shanghai office last year and now it has around 23 people.
- Slide Shanghai is working on some projects for western market only, although we know Chinese social gaming market is very hot. We need understand the local market better first;
- I am very happy our team here, they have done very good work and work hard and efficiently.

[Editor: This article is partially written by Watson Xu of web20share.com on his Chinese post, translated by XingZhen Ren from BFSU.]

Twitter hits $1 billion valuation within 3 years. Facebook reached equal valuation with 2 years. Groupon, however, broke the record, it only takes a year and a half. On April 19th of this year, a consortium, led by DST (a Russian investment company), invested $135 million on Groupon, making the valuation of Groupon shoot up to $1.35 billion. As New York Times said, Groupon was the craziest the Internet company in history.

The business model in Groupon is that it only sales one product or service per day, and via daily updating and bulk-discount price, Groupon is able to attract mass purchasers and then, collect 50% of the transaction commission in return. Groupon creates a new Internet business model consists of e-commerce, social marketing and online ads.

Certainly, there are many Groupon-likers in China. Those imitators copied all the virtue of Groupon, and some of them even involves its interface and model. Resource said there were already over 100 of them, but be frank, even the number is 200+, I would not be surprised. This market is already overheated and going much crazy than people expected. Some of them already raised a large bucket of money, and several deals I heard are around $5 millions; RenRen, the leading Chinese social network also launched its own group purchase site called Nuomi, and it only took hours, amazingly 152,095 users bought the offer (costs around $5.8 for 2 movie tickets, 2 coke, 1 box of popcorn and 1 Häagen-Dazs icecream).

1.  Group Purchase, New and Old business model

If you think sites like Tudou, Youku are copycats of YouTube, Renren, Kaixin001 are copycats of Facebook, I can understand that because there were no video-sharing sites, social networks sites similar to those western services in China. However, I would strongly suggest you Rethink if you believe Groupon model is 100% new for China too. In fact, Group Purchase (in Chinese it’s called Tuan Gou) is hugely popular in China especially in Home improvement/Home decoration market where thousands of people got connected online and buy the same products together in street shops in order to get a good bulk-discount. I met the co-founder of the leading group buy service site TG.com.cn weeks ago. He said his company is expecting rmb 50 millions after-tax income and getting ready for IPO. So education cost for Groupon model is, I would say, nearly zero. It is an ‘old’ model, but also ‘new’ to Chinese consumers as Groupon represents a new format of ONLINE group purchase with the interesting ‘deal of the day’ strategy. No one ever made the online group purchase experience so easy in China.

2. An easier model for Groupon-likers to survive?

Groupon is very easy to copy. But, the interesting point we have to see is that unlike video-sharing, social networks, twitter models which are all about user-base (at burning money) at the beginning, Groupon is making cash-flow since the first day. And Groupon model focus on one deal in one city, and the fact in China is that it’s not difficult to find a deal (from restaurant, spa etc) and the Internet in China is very geographic. In other words, it should be relatively easier for those startups to survive. However, if you have many targeting at the same market, then it’s all about how to do the marketing in the end. Can you offer better share with those merchants? Do you have enough money to reach more industry sectors and grow faster? Surviving is one thing, at some point, you may also need huge money to burn. (Why did Groupon raise such amount of $$$ even when it’s already hot!!)

3.  Better Service or Better Price?

I’ve read some feedback from some Chinese Groupon users. They’ve started complaining on the service they got. ‘Cheap price does not mean we also accept Cheap service’, they said. Groupons can offer you good price, but they can not guarantee whether or not the merchants are able to offer mass customers the service with the good quality. When your users come to you only for cheaper price, be careful, because that might also imply the customer loyalty is low. Especially in China, your customer can quickly move to another one with cheaper price or a big one with better service guaranteed.

4. Happy or Sad story in the end? Startups vs. Big guys

This is typically Chinese-style sad story. When those giants see the interesting new business models, instead of partnering with you or acquiring yours, they prefer to launching something on its own. Renren’s Nuomi has shown its super power with huge user base. Taobao, has launched its Groupon service on ju.taobao.com, and Dianpin (the leading Yelp-like service) has also launched its t.dianping.com. They have not started heavy promotion yet, but they are watching the market until they are fully ready and the market is more mature. So why Chinese VCs still rush for those startups? How do they expect these sites to exit one day? A few very lucky ones could take the lead in the end with enough money to burn, or one of them could be acquired by Groupon if it comes to China one day? Well, I don’t know.

5. Innovation or just Interesting? The Groupons’ Aggregator

Given the fact that there are so many Groupon service in China and I am assuming there are more to come. So the question becomes, where to efficiently find those deals on each service. The answer is obvious, we need a search engine. Now we see the sites such as tg123.com, niutuan.com, 122.net etc the Groupon services aggregator/navigation site. I don’t know what kind of partnership involved with those groupon services aggregated, but it’s smart, isn’t? At least, it perfectly fits for Chinese!

Before you finish the reading, just for you to taste the Chinese Groupons, the following is a list of our favorites (via web20share.com).

1. Lashou – http://www.lashou.com/

• Highlights: recently has closed $5million investment and company valuation is reported around rmb 1 billion.
• Main Group Purchase Item: Restaurant, Pub, KTV, SPA, Hairdressing, Yoga and other selected featured firms.
• Currently Covered Cities: Over 100 cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Daqing, Nanchang etc.

2. Meituan – http://www.meituan.com/

• Highlights: it’s founded by Wang Xin, the guy also co-founded first Chinese Facebook, Xiaonei.com (now Renren.com) and first Chinese Twitter, Fanfou.com (now closed);
• Main Group Purchase Item: Restaurant, Pub, KTV, SPA, Hairdressing, Yoga, etc.
• Currently Covered Cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan

3. Mituan – http://mituan.com/

• Main Group Purchase Item: Quality local living services
• Currently Covered Cities: Hangzhou

4. Cooltuan – http://www.cooltuan.com

• Main Group Purchase Item: Restaurant, SPA, Photography, Hairdressing, Cinema, Gym, Live CS Show, etc.
• Currently Covered Cities: Shanghai

5. Manzuo – http://www.manzuo.com/

• Main Group Purchase Item: Delicacy, Tour, Gym and SPA, etc.
• Currently Covered Cities: Beijing

6. Groupon China – http://www.groupon.cn/

• Main Group Purchase Items: Food & Beverage, Pub, SPA, KTV, Hairdressing, Yoga, Training and transaction, etc.
• Currently Covered Cities: Beijing, Chengdu, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Jinan, Nanning, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, Suzhou, Tianjin, Xiamen, Taiyuan and Zhengzhou.

7. Groupon365 – http://www.groupon365.com/

• Main Group Purchase Item: hottest, and the most fashionable and salable goods
• Currently Covered Cities: Qingdao

8. Tuank – http://www.tuank.com/

• Main Group Purchase Item: Restaurant, Pub, KTV, SPA, Hairdressing, Yoga and other selected featured firms.
• Currently Covered Cities: Nanchang

9. Runtuan – http://www.runtuan.com/

• Main Group Purchase Item: Restaurant, Pub, KTV, SPA, Hairdressing, Yoga etc.
• Currently Covered Cities: Guangzhou

10. 55tuan – http://www.55tuan.com

• Main Group Purchase Item: Restaurant, KTV, SPA, Hairdressing, Yoga etc.
• Currently covered cities: Beijing

There has been rumor on the market that Tencent will invest $10 million into Comsenz, the leading social softwares developer in China since May. It is said the new investment will take over the stakes held by Google China. Today, a report on Sina said Tencent will acquire Comsenz instead of just investment.

Comsenz, well known for its popular BBS software Discuz!, offers free full-range social softwares for hundreds of thousands of China’s small websites, including BBS, CMS, SNS, microblogging and other softwares. Why there are so many small BBS in China, one of the most important reasons is because of Comsenz and its Discuz!.

Why Tencent will be interested in Comsenz? To acquire Comsenz, Tencent can take advantage of broad user base of Comsenz, whose websites can potentially make a large-scale affiliated websites network, covering tens of millions of Chinese netizens. By working closely with Comsenz’s software, it can benefit Tencent’s new search engine Soso.com to compete with Baidu, and build an affiliation network for Tencent’s online ads. For Comsenz, working with Tencent will help to monetize traffics of those small websites.

It is reasonable for Tencent to make such investment. Actually, PHPWind, a head-to-head competitor of Comsenz has been acquired by Alibaba in 2008.

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When we started OpenWebAsia conference, the idea is very simple: We want it to be the leading conference truly focusing on Asian web industry and a platform connecting the west with the east. We did the first and amazing one in 2008 in Seoul, and we were planning to do it again in 2009 but unfortunately did not make it mainly because of the financial crisis (lacking of sponsorship).

But, definitely we want to carry on openning the Asia web. Now with great pleasure, we can confirm you that you won’t miss it this year! Supported by MSC Malaysia and led by our friend Daniel CerVentus and his Entrepreneurs.my team, OpenWebAsia’s SouthEast Asia version is set to 13th-14th, July in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The official site is up on http://sea.openwebasia.com.

What will OpenWebAsia/SEA 2010 focus on:

• Discover why most fail and few succeed in implementing their web strategies in South East Asia
• The good, the bad and the ugly of web technology & platform
• The mobile broadband wave – Android vs. iPhone
• Learn the future of Web and Mobile platform which is shaping the next web resolution
• How Cloud computing strategies can create high growth

The registration page is also up here: http://apps.socialwalk.com/events/393-open-web-asia–south-east-asia. If you are interested in attending, here is the Promo Code you may need for some special discount: 27876.

Looking forwards to meeting you in SEA web.

We’ve been into the web market for a long while. When I started this blog, the aim is very straightforward: writing about Chinese startups and help them grow. We’ve talked to many Chinese startups and young entrepreneurs, written about their stories and tried to understand their needs. Personally, I’ve set up my own startup (which kept me very busy and is the reason that I blogged less and less recently) and have been sort of  ‘experiencing’ the Chinese startup. My founding is, like many other local young entrepreneurs ever told us: Where is the Angel for Chinese startups?

On the one hand, it’s about money. Startups do not need big amount of money to get started, but unfortunately here in China. It’s so hard to find angel investors who believe what the founders believe and are willing to give them money to share the risk together; on the other hand, money does not mean everything. There are loads of cash in China I would say, and there are many people out there waiting for projects. However, the issue is that many startups do not know how to reach them. More importantly most of the local investors are great in traditional business but know little about web industry. They only believe Guanxi will work and how-to-make-money is the only metric they trust, which basically shut down the door to many young men with dreams. Young entrepreneurs need angel money and also need mentors and help.

Calling the Angel for Chinese startups, we want to take the responsibility to help building a better ecosystem for Chinese web industry. To start with, ChinAccelerator, a Dalian based 4 month startup accelerator managed by my friend Cyril Ebersweiler, is the first we want to introduce here.

ChinAccelerator offer extensive support for startups including seed funding, mentorship, and free office space. Anyone who has an innovative idea, founded a company, has the first customer or beta product can apply its incubator program. Participants will receive an initial seed fund of 10,000 CNY per founder (up to 3 founders), an extra marketing budget of 10,000 CNY, and access to strategic partners, angels, VCs and the press to really help you take off.

You can apply for ChinAccelerator’s program here.

And for a healthy local startup ecosystem, more to come…

Not sure why our Internet people love this month, May. Three conference will be held this week in Beijing:

• Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010 (GMIC) – 27th – 28th May – organized by TheGreatWallClub
• CHINICT 6th edition – 27th – 28th May – organized by a great entrepreneur and friend, Franck Nazikian
• 5th China Webmaster Annual Conference (CWAC)- 29th May – organized my good friend Kevin Day’s Comsenz and im286.com

GMIC focus on mobile industry, the hottest sector in Chinese web. Its About says it is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West.

CHINICT says it is the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship. It believes China is becoming bigger than Silicon Valley, both as a hotbed for innovations of global impact & as a magnet for entrepreneurs from all over the world.  It is to showcase this silent yet on-going revolution.

Both GMIC and CHINICT are quite international, i.e. “East meets West” is naturally very important theme. However, CWAC is purely Chinese. If you are an English-speaking reader, you may never heard of this event and even know none of the speakers there, but the fact is that ~2000 grassroot and Chinese webmasters have registered. CWAC as it was in past four years, is to reflect the past year in Chinese web industry, is to think how to build a healthy ecosystem for China web and to discuss “the local industry in practice”.

If you are in Beijing, definitely you need find some chance to catch those superstars in Chinese web. But the question is, which conference you should go for?

1. If you are interested in Mobile industry only, especially want to understand more about Chinese/Japanese mobile industry, GMIC is the one;
2. If you want to see some most interesting entrepreneurs in China, I would suggest you to go to CHINICT since guys like Kaifu Lee will be there.
3. Topic-wise, of course you need make sure if those topics in three conference are attractive enough for you. My two cents: panel discussion normally is better than one-guy speech; the keynotes given by International speaker generally worth your attention rather that the ones by local guys as some Chinese high profile guys usually are good at delivering PR-style presentation which is super boring; But there is also a big problem for most international speakers, they know little about China, therefore their suggestion may not be applied to local market; GMIC and CHINICT are interested in discussing the global issues but CWAC focus on the real issues in China, such as Green growth of local web industry, what’s next for Chinese online social platforms, opportunities and challenges in the government’s “three-networks-in-one” industry change;
4. Speaker-wise, I would like to leave you to make the judgment. There are some people who seems showing-up in every conference and repeat the same talk from time to time; you can also find some people who is un-familiar to foreigners but they are actually playing very important role and have millions of grassroot fans;
5. If you want to save money, of course you need go CWAC which is free but make sure you understand Chinese. The other two obviously, the Chinese ordinary web users are not their target.

So catch your Chinese superstars this week in Beijing, and it’s up to you to tell where they really are.

The rumor just spread the Chinese media minutes ago, Microsoft is in talk with Kaixin001, the leading Chinese social networks. Both parties refused to comment on this deal, but the rumor says Microsoft is willing to invest Kaixin001 in cash and Kaixin001 will also take charge of the operation of MSN China. If this can be confirmed, Kaixin001′s service will be integrated into MSN which is one of the most popular instant messengers used in China as well as the Bing service. Surely in return, Microsoft wants to save MSN China which is not in good situation right now (an insider told me NetEase, the leading Chinese portal is also interested in taking 50% of share of MSN China) and boost its presence in Chinese web2.0 business.

Last Friday, I was invited by Tudou and Christine Lu (the moderator) to join a panel to kick off Tudou Video Festival 2010. Great honor and pleasure sitting next to Gary Wang (CEO of Tudou), David Wolf (blogger at SiliconHutong & CEO of Wolf Group Asia) and Frank Yu (former Microsoft Games exec), and the topic is about the difference between China and US Internet video markets. We went through lots of aspects around this topic. The following is my takes and highlights from other speakers (special thanks to David Feng @davidfeng who’s live tweeting about the discussion.)

Left to Right: Christine Lu, Frank Yu, Gary Wang, Gang Lu, David Wolf. Photo by Marc

Content – Most of the Chinese video content are about Entertainment, but you see less that in US where video is used for news, online show, video marketing, ads etc. And Gary also pointed out that the video content they received this year for the festival is different than before, ‘you can see more creative stuff coming’, he said.

Creators – More and more small teams are now in China created funny/interesting/creative video content. But it’s hard to find individual creators who think video can be the media reporting content such as Technology. I used our video blog mobinode.tv as an example. It now has 60+ video interviews with great startups/entrepreneurs who shared their valuable experience, but we managed to keep doing that for almost a year without any income and the traffic is still not comparable with those ‘entertaining’ stuff.

Technology – When all Chinese video sites still focus on the monetization, the US video market has started on the future of video technology. What if HTML5 is fully accepted; and how the market is going to be changed in Mobile space.

Monetization – Gary said the advertisement is still the nature method for monetization, so does US market. I mentioned the example of how Nicovideo, the leading Japanese video site integrated e-commerce with video content, and Frank also pointed out the Virtual Item could be another try. Gary said they used to try the e-commerce a bit, but it did not work very well.

Copyright – Copyright environment is complex enough in US, but once you drag this into China, it could be more complex, laws, regulations, grey areas and tricks etc. “The copyright cases sometime are just stupid”, Gary said.

Service vs. Ecosystem – YouTube is building a platform for the video content. Tudou spend the past ~5 years doing the same by offering good service, but it has another responsibility, i.e. building a healthy ecosystem for Chinese video market for Chinese creative people. David also made a very good point, “Tudou has a huge future as an education media”.

Tudou also put together some of tweets from the panel discussion into slides which shows some of the highlights.