China Biz-Tech Weekly — Sep. 26, 2016
Last week was amazing. First few days I spent in Singapore at Slush and on Saturday I had a great pleasure interviewing Trevor Owens at Startup Grind Shenzhen. We covered a lot of interesting topics related to lean startup/enterprise. Trevor is one of those people you should follow. He is currently based in Shanghai and focuses on building his business in the Middle Kingdom.
I plan to do a podcast interview with Trevor this week, but before I can share his knowledge with you enjoy the latest edition of China Biz-Tech Weekly.
1) “Women launch more than half of all new Internet companies in China” (@bloomberg)
“Among the top U.S. venture firms, women make up about 10 percent of the investing partners and only half of the firms have any women of that rank. China is already more balanced: About 17 percent of investing partners are female and 80 percent have at least one woman.”
2) Around 120 million Chinese travelled abroad last year (@bloomberg)
“Chinese tourists seem to be packing more than just sunscreen and cameras on vacation. The data discrepancy suggests they’re also shifting cash by buying homes while studying abroad, signing up for life insurance products in Hong Kong, or opening deposit accounts to squirrel money offshore.”
3) Tencent is trying to change the way users will interact with their smartphones — and not only that (@caixin)
“Instead of installing a number of different apps, each of which provides a specific service, users will be allowed to find services through a search feature on WeChat or by scanning a quick-response (QR) code, a square with black and white dots embedded with information, the statement said.”
4) When Chinese companies “go shopping” (@nytimes)
“Chinese leaders have made clear their intention of using state funds to acquire technological capabilities overseas and bring them home, and a series of purchases in recent years have highlighted that strategy.”
5) One bad news for Baidu after another (@cnbc)
“Alibaba is now expected to overtake Baidu as the largest player in the country’s digital advertising market. Baidu’s share in China’s digital ad market is expected to drop to 21 percent this year from 28 percent last year. Meanwhile, Alibaba’s market share is expected to rise by four percentage points to 29 percent.”
6) LeEco just raised more than $1b from Chinese investors (@scmp)
“The funding follows an announcement in August that LeEco plans to invest 12 billion yuan in an electric car factory in Zhejiang province’s Deqing county, which is slated to be producing 400,000 electric cars annually by 2018.”
7) Taobao — a Chinese e-commerce giant known (also) for it's low-quality offerings — just became China's most valuable brand (@scmp)
“Now valued at 230 billion yuan, Taobao was followed by telecommunications operator China Mobile, worth 227 billion yuan, and mainland internet search leader Baidu in third place, with a value of 218 billion yuan, the annual ranking by the Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute showed.”
8) VR going mainstream in China: Will China lead the “gamification of the world”? (@quartz)
“In China, however, VR is steadily going mainstream, thanks hundreds of dedicated arcades and cafes that are spreading across the country. Most of them charge users a fee to wear a headset and experience VR for a set amount of time, eliminating the need for consumers to shell out hundreds of dollars to buy gear themselves. They’re growing increasingly popular and bringing VR to consumers who otherwise wouldn’t go near it — while helping build China into a VR market that’s projected to be worth $8.5 billion in just four years.”
9) PODCAST: Chat with Bay McLaughlin (Brinc.io) about #hardware, #startups, and #China (@yourstruly)
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