#yeahmobi

Forbes announced its list of “Forbes 30 under 30 Asia” of 2017, the annual ranking of Asia’s brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers. Yeahmobi CEO Xiaowu Zou is named in the list, based on his outstanding performance on entrepreneurship.

Forbes sifted through thousands of nominations and then convened a panel of judges – from Kaifu Lee and Jean Liu to Jimmy Choo and Sonny Bill Williams to bring out the list.

The Asian list is a continuation of the global expansion of the Forbes 30 under 30 franchise – a franchise that includes alumni such as Palmer Luckey from Oculus, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy from Snapchat, basketball superstar LeBron James and K-pop star G-Dragon.

Forbes’s announcement remarked Zou’s outstanding performance managing Chinese marketing company Yeahmobi. The company reported a profit of $13 million on revenues of $93 million last year.

Throughout the process of startup, Zou holds on to one opinion: to find the thing he truly loves. As the now 29-year-old entrepreneur said in an interview, startup is a long and arduous paths, with numerous setbacks and obstacles awaiting. The weapon used to conquer the route is to be clear that what you do is what you truly love to do. Zou claims he made through the difficult path bearing in mind that marketing and connecting good products with potential users is where his true passion lies on.

Like many young Chinese students, after obtaining Bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology Beijing, Zou chose to seek further education abroad. He went to the University of Arizona and obtained Master’s degree there. During his studies abroad, Zou started the business specialized in marketing, monetizing traffic of his blog. He soon accumulated his first bucket of gold, and went back China to found his overseas marketing company Yeahmobi with several friends.

Mobile performance marketing network Yeahmobi has just raised RMB ￥639 million (about $100 million), to bolster its global expansion. The company now values at about ￥5 billion (about $720 million).

The funding is said to be used as working capital needed in mobile advertising business in subsidiary companies and branches, and as reserve fund for future mergence and acquisition of companies in the relevant industry.

Launched in 2011, the company is an intelligent mobile advertising platform designed to help mobile technology companies reach global growth, acquire active users and monetize inventory. It operates in the field of consumer apps, mobile games, cross-border ecommerce, internet finance, lifestyle, travel and other industries, covering over 200 countries and regions, and delivering global coverage at large scale.

The last funding round of the company was closed in April 2016, and raised $25 million through equity funding, led by Chinese tech giant Xiaomi and its CEO Lei Jun.

In profitability, the company reported half year result of 2016 by making $97 million revenue and $11 million net profits, sustaining growth in business operation.

Yeahmobi has also just awarded Mobile Champion of China Channel Partner by Google in Google’s annual Channel Partner Summit. The winning was given according to Google’s international performance standards, criteria including traffic volume, number of active users, reach of service and so on.

China-Malaysia Mobile Internet Conference was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia recently. The conference was hosted by government organization CAMIA and Shangfang Media. Developers and entrepreneurs of internet companies from both countries converged and forecasted future development of mobile internet. Yeahmobi’s VP of international business Daisy Wu was invited to the meeting and addressed the attendees.

Malaysia is the youngest mobile internet market in the South East Asia, with high mobile Internet coverage, and 500% growth in last 10 years. Data suggested, Malaysia has 21.35 million Internet users, covering 70% of the population. Among them, 41% are male users, while 59% are female. The country has 41.8 million mobile phones, and some citizens use more than one phone. 77% of phone owners use a prepaid mobile phone, while the rest pay after spend. In mobile internet field, 79% of mobile internet users are under 35 years old, making the country the youngest market in SEA. Until now, all major cities in the country have 3G coverage, and some areas have access to 4G service. Wifi is also available in big cities, and still growing. Residents or tourists can easily find a restaurant or café with internet access in cities.

As one of the biggest mobile internet market in the world, China has a huge user base and generated a lot of excellent apps, services or business models which impressed the world. Outstanding products gain confidence and wish to test their products in a bigger market. On such basis, China and Malaysia has rich cooperation opportunities and spaces.

Yeahmobi’s VP of international business, Daisy Wu addressed the attendees

Yeahmobi’s VP of international business, Daisy Wu shared Yeahmobi’s experience on internationalizing mobile apps, and shared her thoughts on how to boost cooperation on mobile internet fields between the two countries.

GamesBeat Summit organized by tech media VentureBeat was held in Sausalito, California from May 3 to 4. Yeahmobi was invited to the event as golden sponsor. The event is about the global business of gaming. It brought together 180 gaming executives from all segments of the gaming ecosystem to develop a blueprint for the industry’s expansion in 2016 and beyond.

Through years of development, gaming industry is now a huge one. It began from consoles, but now was extended to everywhere, from mobile, virtual reality to augmented reality. These new platforms and gears opens up expansion route and opportunity for game companies. They are constantly energize developers, to make continuous growth in this huge market.

Mobile market alone, was predicted to generate a revenue of a $36.9 billion worldwide this year. A lot of former console manufacturing companies turn to iOS and Android devices, like Nintendo. They have larger potential to engage more audiences. Marvel Entertainment gaming manager Peter Phillips said in the Summit that today, gaming in the Marvel universe is all about mobile end, instead of big-budget console games they did before.

However, as more and more players entering mobile gaming industry, the cost of acquiring user is growing higher. To deal with this, speakers at GamesBeat Summit offered their views. Nexon Chief Executive Officer Owen Mahoney thought rising marketing cost was destroying profit margins. The reason why this happens is because many mobile games are similar. He believed mobile games should not be treated like a commodity, but a piece of art. If publishing companies can make game fun and different, customers will like it without spending too much on differentiate it with others.

Founder of N3twork and Ngmoco Neil Yong was very optimistic on mobile gaming industry. He expected more revenue to be generate this year. He put forward a novel view that instead of spending large amount of acquisition cost, developers should create games that maximize life span, and encourage people to spend. He encourages game makers to use different techniques to get players to spend, like introducing new way of purchase. Through this method, even there is not many people playing, but the average revenue generated per user is increasing.

Samsung is a tech giant in terms of its device, but it also introduces its own Galaxy App store. It announced a scheme “Made for Samsung” to help mobile apps develop, promote and distribute, including products by independent game developers. The program offer faces to contents that can differentiate Samsung’s ecosystem, and gaming is an important part of that, Vice president at emerging platforms at Samsung, Mihai Pohontu said.

Yeahmobi has also paid large attention on help developers solving the problem of high acquisition cost. We promise that developers only need to focus on their products, and Yeahmobi will help do the others. From earlier this year, Yeahmobi introduced Cost-effective Campaign which aims to increase app installs with lower amount of marketing spend.

Since the beginning of 2016, India has been repeatedly mentioned in all kinds of articles discussing technological development, start-up environment, and VC focus. The whole world has realized the strength of the second-populated and yet-to-be-developed market. VCs are looking to latch on to the opportunities in the India startup space. Two investment-related events were held recently to showcase what the investment environment of India is really like.

The first one is Chindia TMT Dialogue Conference held on May 30. The event is to “Connect the top rising economics, inspiring the future world”. It was supported by Chinese Embassy in India, and Foreign Investment Administration of Ministry of India. Government support obviously highlights the depth of the event. Other attendees included senior managers from Alibaba, SnapDeal, PayTM, Xiaomi, SHAREit, UC and so on, and VCs like Sequoia, Lightspeed, Bertelsmann India, Fosun, and Heli.

Chief Business Officer of Yeahmobi, Sun Han was invited to the event (middle)

The participants shared their thoughts on investment future of India, and cooperation and development of Chinese and Indian Internet industry. Mobile marketing service provider Yeahmobi was invited to the event. Its Chief Business Officer in India, Sun Han said, “India is a fascinating place to learn from and communicate with. We need to penetrate into the India market, to work with local people, and to learn from our local partners, in order to truly understand it and conduct business there”.

Localization was believed to be a key issue companies entering India should consider first. The Indian market has its unique features, like multi-lingual factor, complicated religious communities, distinctive lifestyle, and relatively underdeveloped infrastructure. However, the market did show great potential on ecommerce, online payment, cloud service and so on, which are fields VCs are eager to latch on to.

The second event is a series of Investment Roadshow co-organized by Yeahmobi and Indian tech media Onionfans starting from May 1. The event introduced Chinese investors to Indian start-ups.

Startup company presenting business to potential investors

Startup company preparing for presentation

According to Global Economic Conditions Survey, though world economy seemed to gloom, investment in South Asia did not slow down. Some statistics show that the least number of companies in South Asia cut back capital expenditure. On the contrary, it had the second largest number of companies increasing their expenditure, right after North America.

CEO of Paytm Mr.Bhushan introduced investment opportunities in India to Chinese investors.

Some representatives from Chinese VCs also showed faith on Indian start-up economy. CEO of Incapital, Xiang Jianbiao said, in his view, Indian Internet businesses stand a great chance, as they generally have International vision and do not have language barrier in international expansion as Chinese companies have. This will be a huge strengthen in accelerated development stage.

Start-ups from online healthcare, ecommerce, utility, socializing, and cloud service won the most attention. One of the ecommerce platform reached initial funding agreement with investor right after presentation.

Director of investment of Yeahmobi, Huang Shuozi shared thoughts on cross-border investment practices.

Yeahmobi Indian team and startup representative

GMIC Beijing was a huge success as leaders in Mobile Internet industry, representatives from tech companies, elite developers and many more crowed the National Convention Center of China in Beijing. This year, the theme of the convention is “Mobile Infinity”. The topic certainly echoes with the enormous market tide happening right now in the whole world.

In the beginning of year 2016, Yeahmobi was successfully listed on NEEQ stock market of China, and announced the next move of the company – to help Chinese enterprises with their international expansion. Here in the convention, we were so glad to see so many Chinese enterprises do well in their businesses and so many attract attentions from outside the country. As a service provider, Yeahmobi will always be with our clients when they introduce their outstanding product or service to a larger market.

Yeahmobi also had a great time at GMIC with our friends!