Hurun Report's Interview with Newborn Town's CEO: Change the World, with Products Closer to "People"

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

Recently Li Ping, CEO of Newborn Town Inc., accepted the interview of Hurun Report China. Here's the original text of the interview: 

Li Ping, who started his business at the age of 22 and is now 32, is a veritable representative of young entrepreneurs in every sense. Over the years, he's been leading his team to broader global markets. He was awarded Google's "Top Developer" in 2015, and launched a series of social networking and gaming products of high quality, including live-streaming social app MICO, voice-chat social app YoHo, etc. Now, the company’s business has covered more than 200 countries and regions and served over 1.3 billion users. He has managed to make Newborn Town the largest social networking company focusing on global market in China. 

Li Ping has been a believer of changing the world with technology since his school days. The year of graduation, he came to Zhongguancun, the Silicon Valley of China, in the pursuit of his dreams, and met a group of like-minded partners. They founded an IT training company, aiming to foster IT talents in the wave of the Internet. They coded during the day, and distributed leaflets and organized IT training at night.

Later, when the idea of going abroad and doing globalized business was raised, they really hit it off. Despite the lack of a fixed office and delayed payment of wages, Li Ping and his team were determined to make something, be something, and even "change the world". He knew, the only path to "corner overtaking" was to roll up his sleeves and give it a go, and the company grew up rapidly during such hard times.

Q Hurun Report: Through which opportunity or for what purpose were you driven to select the business track of "going global"? 

A Li Ping: It was the phenomenal boom of tools going global. There was a great demand for tool apps among overseas users in the early days when Android, in its infancy, was not yet perfect. That's why we focused on this market. 

From today's perspective, "going abroad" has become an option inevitable for major Internet platforms searching for growth space. The overseas open social networking market features a fast rate of growth, but a relatively low penetration rate on the whole. The demand, however, is universal and rigid, so that the certainty of this track is obvious to all.  

Q Hurun Report: How do you capture the pain points and needs of overseas users? 

A Li Ping: Focusing on user demand is our "primary nature" since the day we started our business, which is to stick close to users and make products closer to "people". Over the years of globalizing, we've accumulated an ecology of 1.3 billion user base and massive data. In addition, we've been also optimizing our underlying technology and user scenario engine, helping us to improve our insights into overseas markets and empower our R&D, operation, customer acquisition and monetization.

As for results, we've influenced the social habits and ways of certain people. For instance, in the Middle East, a relatively conservative region, our products have become the mainstream social networking platform locally, and some local inhabitants even get acquainted, married and even changed their life trajectories through our products. We've made a little impact on the world by degrees. 

Q Hurun Report: How do you arrange the overseas market? 

A Li Ping: We divide the global market into emerging and developed markets. In the early days, we started from emerging markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia, where there's a large population base and a younger population structure, featuring rapid accumulation of Internet users, strong demand for social networking, and fast improvement of Internet infrastructure, as well as salient affordability in certain regions, for example, the GCC countries, which lead in the world in terms of GDP per capita. Generally speaking, they're blue ocean markets with great potential for development. 

After establishing ourselves there, we shifted to developed markets. Now we've already gained good market share in North America, and are expanding into markets with more challenges, such as Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the future, we'll also set foot into in Africa and Latin America, where Internet infrastructure is increasingly improved and there's great room for development.

Q Hurun Report: What are the biggest challenges Chinese developers going global to overseas markets are facing, and how could they be addressed? 

A Li Ping: The culture and user habits vary with countries and regions overseas, leading to a complicated market environment. In this case, the biggest challenge for many developers going global is the ability of localization, which tests their executive force, management system, organization and mobilization, as well as the ability to find people. 

To survive in such markets, it's necessary to conduct in-depth market research before creating products that conform to local cultural customs and user habits, and incisive localization operations after products are launched. 

For example, in our products for Arabs in the Middle East, the reading order of text is adjusted to right to left, and gifts are presented in the forms of diamonds, sports cars and other symbols of wealth preferred by users there. The traditional Middle East society and, complexity of culture, beliefs and interpersonal relationships tend to cause disputes between users, in which case the platform must intervene. We've recruited a lot of locals for our Arabic customer service, available 24 hours a day, and we require them to respond within 10 seconds and answer users' primary questions using no more than 10 sentences, because service really plays an important role in the platform's atmosphere, content ecology, etc. 

Q Hurun Report: In the end of 2019, Newborn Town Inc. was listed on the HKSE and known as China's "first stock of social networking going global". What's the logic supporting this success? 

A Li Ping: First and foremost, the certainty of the track. The global open social networking market is a gigantic and continuously growing track. It will boom to a market with hundreds of billions of dollars in the next few years. 

Except for this basis, our competence in product R&D and localization is the key to our position ahead of our competitors. We've developed a series of products in line with local culture and habits, gathered local teams in more than ten cities worldwide, opened up local content resources and channels for content creation and brand building, provided personalized services for local users, and achieved all-around localization, all enabling our user data and performance concerning social products to enjoy sustained growth. Our revenue in the first half of this year reached RMB 1.04 billion, close to last year's total revenue, implying an 8-fold increase in revenue in 5 years.

Last but not the least, our social networking ecology, user scenario engine, and flywheel of growth (in both technological and operational realms) allow us to identify and seize every new market opportunity and achieve rapid breakthroughs in multiple vertical fields, thus unlocking new growth potential for our company.

Q Hurun Report: Is there any special story or experience you'd like to share with us since you started your business? 

A Li Ping: I remember a Ukrainian user, his country trapped in the turmoil of war, and his whole family unemployed. Later, he taught himself computer programming and became a content partner of Newborn Town, helping us produce content. Through this way, his earnings grew to tens of thousands of dollars a month, and he became the breadwinner for his family, provided for his parents, got a girlfriend, and established his own studio. 

There're many more such stories amid our journey of going global, and when I am old, I think, they'll be something worth looking back on.

Li Ping 

Co-founder and CEO of Newborn Town Inc. 

One of the core promoters facilitating the globalization of China's mobile Internet, with more than ten years of work experience in the mobile Internet and AI industries, one of China's earliest Google Play "top developers", and an honoree of the "Hurun China Under 30s To Watch"

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.