Kuaishou Overseas has finally unified into a product.
Text | Shi Xian
Edit | Gao Honghao
"LatePost" exclusively learned that the recent Kuaishou (01024. HK) has made major adjustments to its overseas business, and the core idea is: to consolidate products and improve efficiency.
In August 2021, Kuaishou Internationalization Business Unit launched a product merger campaign code-named "Trinity", planning to merge three originally independent applications of Kwai Middle East, Kwai Latin America and Snack Video, which focuses on the Southeast Asian market, into one Kwai product.
Kwai's product form and interface design are basically the same as Kuaishou China's main station. It will be the only product of Kuaishou overseas in the future.
Organizationally, Kuaishou's overseas business has changed the past model of establishing independent product teams for different countries, regions and markets. At present, Kwai is building a unified product middle office and operation middle platform, the former head of the Latin American market Shao Kai was appointed as the general manager of Kuaishou's overseas operations, and the former head of the Middle East market Xu Zhiwei became the general manager of Kuaishou's overseas products. They all reported to Qiu Guangyu, senior vice president of Kuaishou.
It is understood that kuaishou began to discuss the merger from March this year, and it took a total of five months from discussion, implementation to completion.
This adjustment means that Kuaishou has abandoned the overseas expansion path of "exploring different markets with multiple teams and developing multiple products". The idea of expanding overseas markets with unified products and unified teams is closer to TikTok, a product of ByteDance.
However, "LatePost" learned that while the organizational adjustment, Kuaishou is also adjusting the strategy of overseas market expansion.
According to a number of people familiar with the matter, Kuaishou has spent more than 5.5 billion yuan in overseas markets in the first half of the year. However, in the second half of the year, the plan to enter the US and Canadian markets was temporarily suspended.
In the markets it has entered in Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Korea and Russia, Kuaishou's current focus has shifted from acquiring new users to retaining old users through refined operations. One Kuaishou overseas project source said the team had realized that the way to expand the market on a large scale like in the past was too inefficient.
The above-mentioned person said that Kuaishou is also facing great competitive pressure in China, and user growth and retention, e-commerce business, etc. need greater investment, which also affects Kuaishou's overseas expansion strategy to a certain extent.
"This does not mean that Kuaishou will give up overseas markets." A Kuaishou person said. In September 2021, Kuaishou's overseas business was upgraded to an international business unit. "Kuaishou just needs to leave users in a reasonable period of time now, and then consider the growth of new users."
Kuaishou Overseas has tried three expansions
Kuaishou's international business was first established in 2017, and its core product is Kwai, focusing on Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and South Korea. At that time, Kwai's main strategy for expansion was to rely on large-scale advertising to acquire users. In the first half of 2018, this product rushed to the top of Google Play and App Store downloads in these countries.
Kwai soon moved into more than twenty countries, but multi-regional operations placed high demands on the team's resource richness, coordination capabilities, and localized operations, which were not available to Kuaishou, who was going to sea for the first time.
A kuaishou overseas employee recalled that the entire Kuaishou overseas team was only more than 30 people at the earliest, and after half a year, it grew to about 200 people, but in more than 20 countries that entered, only a few key countries such as Brazil established local operation teams. As a result, in most markets, "users come and they're lost quickly." In December 2018, with the departure of the head Liu Xinhua, Kuaishou suspended its overseas expansion plans for the first time.
Half a year later, Kuaishou co-founder Cheng Yixiao personally led the team and started the second international journey. In order to efficiently explore different markets, Kuaishou began to try to expand different markets with multiple teams and different products at this time.
Outside of Kwai, Kuaishou has formed a new team code-named KT. Unlike Kwai, which focuses primarily on India and Brazil, KT has developed a new product, Snack Video, and is responsible for exploring the Southeast Asian market.
But at about the same time, Kuaishou competed fiercely with Douyin in China and launched a "K3 campaign" to sprint to the goal of 300 million daily active users, and the international business progressed slowly because it did not get enough resources to tilt.
In May 2020, the goal of "K3 Campaign" was achieved, and internationalization became the focus of Kuaishou's business for the third time. In addition to Kwai and Snack Video, Kuaishou launched Zynn for the North American market. This is a video with TikTok, finger swipe up and down. Users can get cashback by introducing others to sign up and watch videos.
So far, Kuaishou has formed three teams, each of which has developed different products for different markets. "This model makes sense in the early days of the business, the company doesn't know how to play new markets, and small teams can quickly trial and error, accumulate cognition and methodology." A Kuaishou person said.
However, with the removal of Zynn from the shelves in North America, Kuaishou's third expansion of internationalization has slowed down again. "The corresponding investment has also been reduced to a certain extent." The above-mentioned Kuaishou person said.
In the previous several times to go to sea, Kuaishou basically stopped at the first step of obtaining users. A Brazilian service provider who has had many contacts with Kuaishou's overseas business said that the first few times Kuaishou went to sea, "when it comes to digging up anchors and enriching platform content, Kuaishou lacks the intention and clear plan to continue to spend money." ”
Fourth adjustment:
Team merge, unified use of Kwai
In August 2020, with Qiu Guangyu, former vice president of Didi and COO of the International Business Unit, joining Kuaishou and becoming the head of overseas, Kuaishou began its fourth expansion.
Starting in March 2021, the Kuaishou InternationalIzation Division led by Qiu Guangyu began to discuss the integration of the three products. "LatePost" learned that after the merger of Kwai Latin America, Kwai Middle East and Snack Video, the three products will share user accounts and video content.
"As the number of users grows larger, teams in different markets are still setting up business lines such as growth, products, and operations, which is undoubtedly making wheels repeatedly." A Kuaishou person said that this not only increases labor costs, but also the company can not optimize the allocation of limited resources.
An analyst who has long been concerned about short videos believes that Kuaishou has merged short videos in different markets to make the product content richer. The problem of different user content consumption habits in different markets can be solved by improving the accuracy of content recommendations.
In addition to the operation and product middle platform, Kuaishou also set up an overseas live broadcast middle platform, which was responsible for Zhou Chi, who was originally the person in charge of the live broadcast business of the Kuaishou main station.
Wang Meihong served as the technical team leader of the international business, reporting to Chen Dingjia in a straight line and Qiu Guangyu on the dotted line. Wang Meihong was originally a Facebook technical employee who participated in the construction of Facebook's Newsfeed feed product.
The overseas team further clarified its responsibilities. Luo Yan served as the head of the overseas growth team, gong Pinghua served as the head of the overseas recommendation team, and both leaders reported to Wang Meihong. Kuaishou Overseas has also set up a separate business planning department, which is headed by Duan Yulei.
"In the early days of Kuaishou's overseas business, there was no army, only an air force commanded by a distance." A long-term concern about Kuaishou overseas people commented. In the past, Kuaishou's overseas business was dominated by domestic employees, and the solution to cultural differences and other issues was mainly through the recruitment of some foreign employees in China.
Now, like TikTok, Kuaishou is recruiting a large number of overseas employees in the market location to try to solve the long-standing localization operation problems. "Up to now, the ratio of employees in Kuaishou International Business Unit at home and abroad is basically 1:1." A Kuaishou person said.
Suspension of entry into the North American market
In addition to organizational adjustments, Kuaishou simultaneously adjusted its business strategy in the second half of this year.
A person familiar with the matter told LatePost that this year Kuaishou is facing greater competitive pressure in the domestic market, so it cannot give overseas business more budgets.
Kuaishou originally planned to re-enter the North American market in October this year, but the plan has been suspended.
"There should be no more entry into the North American market in the short term." A number of Kuaishou overseas sources said. "Management also did not explicitly indicate how long 'short-term' meant."
In the United States, which has a population of 330 million, hundreds of millions of people opened TikTok last August. Facebook's Instagram and Google's YouTube are also pushing ahead with short video operations.
In addition to the North American market, in the first half of this year, Kuaishou also focused on Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, Russia and other markets. Since the third quarter, Kuaishou's strategy in the above markets has also changed from expanding new users to maintaining existing users while enriching the content ecology.
A person close to Kuaishou said that at the end of August this year, the annual monthly active user target of Kuaishou's products in overseas markets has been lowered to 200 million. According to Kuaishou's second-quarter financial report, the number of monthly active users of Kuaishou's overseas products has reached 180 million at the end of June.
Kuaishou has also begun to build a monetization system overseas, including advertising and live rewards. A person familiar with the matter said that the goal of Kuaishou's overseas commercialization team is to complete the system from 0 to 1 by the end of this year.
Brazil is the most established market for Kuaishou to operate at present. "LatePost" learned that Kuaishou will start experimenting with advertising in Brazil in the fourth quarter, while Southeast Asia and the Middle East will try more live tips.
After the adjustment, Kuaishou Overseas's products and organizations are very similar to TikTok. "TikTok has proven that it's faster and more efficient to do so."