China Internet Stats, Trends, Insights
Kuaishou, also known as Kwai (English app) in China, is the second-largest Chinese short-video app/platform in China, following ByteDance-owned TikTok (Douyin). Kwai platform also supports live streaming.
Top Chinese short video apps compared: Tik Tok vs. Kwai – Part 1 Platforms, Part 2 7 Lessons for marketers
About Kuaishou
It’s developed by Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., Ltd., founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao. Su Hua worked for Google and Baidu as a programmer.
Kuaishou, originally known as GIF Kuaishou, started as a mobile app to create and share GIF images in March 2011. It transformed to a short-video community in November 2012.
Kuaishou’s investors include Baidu and Tencent. The founder and CEO is Su Hua.
By 2013, Kuaishou mobile app had already reached 100 million daily users. By 2019, it had surpassed 200 million active daily users.
In March 2017, Kuaishou closed a US$350 million investment round led by Tencent.In January 2018, Forbes estimated the company’s valuation to be approximately US$18 billion.
Kuaishou has a particularly strong user base among users outside of China’s tier 1 cities.
Kuaishou (Kwai), a top competitor of Douyin (TikTok) in China’s short video market, has increased its target for live streaming e-commerce at 250 billion yuan in 2020.
Douyin’s live streaming e-commerce target for 2020 is also as high as 200 billion yuan. And, Taobao live streaming revenues were between 200 billion yuan and 250 billion yuan in 2019.
Kuaishou completed about 35 billion yuan e-commerce GMV in 2019 and it did not include the non-monitored data, in which case the live streaming anchor redirects the users to her personal WeChat account and completes the transaction on WeChat; this accounts for a large proportion.
Kuaishou’s current daily GMV is about 400 million yuan.
