10/14 TBC Insider Digest
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Insider Digest 10/14/21: Taobao Deals Update, Live Shopping Update 1H 2021, LinkedIn Departs China
Housekeeping / Announcements:
We’ll have our first TBCI Insider Sharing on Friday, October 29at 8AM PST / 11AM EST / 11PM China time inside Discord! It will be with Anton, who’s very active in TBCI and currently a professor at CUHK Shenzhen. Anton has been doing research on the Chinese semiconductor industry, and will be sharing some of his findings with us!
If you are interested in sharing what you’re working on with the community, provided that it’s about China tech / investing, please do reach out as we plan on having these regularly!
Meanwhile, we’ll still have our Friday morning meetup this week on Discord, please do join us! As always, it is 9AM EST / 9PM Asia time inside the app.
Do check out our Livecast with Andy Tian, founder of Asia Innovations Group, a pre-IPO unicorn (do reach out if you are an institutional investor interested in meeting them). Some of you might remember that we recorded this live over the summer. Please subscribe to the livecast if you haven’t!
We’re working on a few longer pieces so here’s what I have for you this week! I think all of them are super interesting, especially the Live Shopping update report.
Taobao Deals, Alibaba's answer to Pinduoduo, apparently held its first media day, which resulted in a few writeups in the press. It's making some progress, but it did not give any real numbers of substance. It was the top app overall in the Apple Appstore in China in July, and the top Shopping app in August.
Interoperability remains a problem: recall that I've already written that many Alibaba apps have launched their WeChat mini programs in the past year or so. This includes food delivery ele.me, video platform Youku, home design Tangping, etc. But it does excludes Alibaba's main apps of Taobao, Tmall, Juhuasuan, and secondhand marketplace Xianyu. We also know now that the Taobao Deals mini program was submitted to WeChat for approval in February, and has yet to be approved. The team claims to be sending daily emails to WeChat, with very little response. I imagine this very public comment will surely draw the ire of regulators shortly.
10/14/21 Live Shopping Update 1H 2021
TL;DR: You probably know this already from the live shopping stuff I've been posting, but here's some new data to confirm what I've been saying. Live shopping is all about price (and impulse, but that doesn't show up in this report) and it appeals to the lower income earners in China most, as well as those living in 2nd tier and below cities. Douyin skews younger than everyone else, although basically everyone who uses live shopping is young, and 18-30 is the most common age for both streamers and shoppers.
Summary of the Fastdata 1H 2021 Live Shopping Report is below:
Short video users: 907mm (China only has ~1bn internet users in total, so this is significant)
1H 2021 e-commerce GMV: 6.11 Trn RMB ($950Bn)
1H 2021 live shopping GMV: 1.09 Trn RMB ($170Bn, for reference, all of 2020 was ~$150Bn, but note that both numbers include duplicates)
Live shopping user penetration rate: 20.2% (divided by active e-commerce users)
Female users: 61.6%
Users with less than 5000 RMB ($776) in monthly income account for 73.8% (further establishing that live shopping is for the less affluent to make impulse purchases on good deals)
10/14/21 LinkedIn Departs China
The biggest China tech news this week is probably LinkedIn's shutting down of the Chinese version of its core app. The reason, states the corporate blog, is because 1) it hasn't been very successful in the "social aspects" of its app in China, and 2) it has been "facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China." Let's examine the ways in which both of these are true and yet incomplete.
First, it's true that LinkedIn China's social media platform is not where people flaunt their professional achievements or deepen their business networks.
For existing contacts with whom one's already acquainted, WeChat is a much better forum and engagement is high in the Moments feed.
If the goal is to broadcast and reach those one does not already know, then a domestic alternative like the professional network Maimai is much more suitable. Maimai has, after all, at least 110mm users, more than twice as many as LinkedIn's 50mm (some cite 45mm). It also has — and I'm just being objective here — a superior product. Local innovations, yes, but also better content operations and integrations, resulting in a vibrant community that generally suffers from too much activity rather than too little.
Highlights from the Discord server (please click through below to the exact message that you missed):
BillSinocism - Caixin - Shares of Futu, UP Fintech Plunge in U.S. on People’s Daily Article
AlubaCap asks: Ant new capital requirements?
hc-72: asks about Tim Horton’s China (and a long conversation follows!)
Please join us there, I think you’ll enjoy it, as it’s quickly become the most active part of TBCI!
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