China’s leading live video streaming platform YY Inc., which is a NASDAQ-listed company, released an independent brand for financial advice in last September. Zhiniu Finance’s appeal is simple: its model combines two of the most popular things in China’s IT industry: video streaming and internet finance.
Mo Wengang, the CEO of Zhiniu Finance, recently shared his insights on this new market with AllChinaTech.
What does Zhiniu do?
We are a live stream financial platform under YY Inc. We provide investors with financial information, investment strategy and stock guidance through live videos. Our lecturers include financial analysts and stock experts who come from securities brokerage firms and investment advisory institutions. The lecturers try to get investors to follow them using informative presentations, and investors give them money in the form of tips in return. So far, our monthly active user (MAU) count has exceeded 14.5 million, with more than 5,000 lecturers sharing their info with investors on our platform every day. To enrich our content, we have carried out in-depth cooperation with financial institutions such as Guangfa Securities and Capital Securities in investment consulting.
Why did YY decide to do this?
There are two reasons why YY was dedicated to making live financial videos.
As early as 2013, YY launched a financial channel to provide information for investors. The wildest example is that a lecturer with only 300 followers was able to make RMB 6 million in half a year. With the arrival of the bull market, monthly active users on YY’s financial channel rapidly increased to eight million in the second half of 2014. This data made us realize that the financial live video market is much larger than we imagined. As a result, YY released Zhiniu Finance in September.
We also found that followers on live financial platforms are more willing to tip than those on other platforms. So far, our Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) has exceeded USD 153.9.
Why is this model effective?
Our biggest highlight is integrating live video with internet finance. In financing, there are massive amounts of information and a changeable market. Investors are in urgent need of a method of communication that can correctly and efficiently transfer information about the capital market. The nature of video streaming is information transfer and content consumption, which can be intuitive and timely. That’s why interactive video streaming has become the most ideal way for investors to get information.
How does your company compete?
We mainly have two advantages: on one hand, we are the first financial live platform at home in China, which gives us a great first-mover advantage. Using this advantage, we have built our own ecosystem that includes lecturers, investors, labor unions and platforms. In this complex ecosystem, all players are closely connected with each other, which greatly enhances the stability of the platform.
On the other hand, as a leading live video platform, YY Inc. has rich experience in monetization, which is very helpful to us.
What’s next?
Live financial videos are the foundation of Zhiniu. We hope we can launch other channels to analyze the macro economy and the real estate market in the future. We will also cooperate with teams creating professionally-generated content (PGC) such as CCTV Securities, the Tsinghua PBC School of Finance, and Guangdong radio and television to improve the quality of our live content.
We also hope to expand our business to other areas. For example, we are planning to cooperate with securities and funds to sell financial products on our platform, which means investors can make investments directly through our platform in the future.
(Top photo from sohu.com)