SHANGHAI, March 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Qiming Venture Partners’ portfolio company Zhihu (NYSE: ZH) on March 26th EST listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The issue price is US$9.5/ADS. The stock closed at US$8.5/ADS on the first trading day, with a market cap of about US$4.75billion.
Zhihu is an online Q&A community that has attracted a wide array of content creators. With its product launched in January 2011, Zhihu empowers people to share knowledge, experiences and insights, and to find their answers.
Qiming started investing in Zhihu in its Series A funding round in 2011 and followed-on in its Series B, Series C, Series D and Series D1 round. Qiming owns 9.72% of the company after its IPO.
The listing of Zhihu is the fourth IPO in the Qiming portfolio in 2021.
Zhihu is the largest Q&A-inspired online community and one of the top five comprehensive online content communities in China, both in terms of average mobile MAUs and revenue in 2020, according to China Insights Consultancy, or CIC. Zhihu is widely regarded as a highly trustworthy platform offering the highest-quality content.
“At Zhihu, where one asks a question, another will answer. We documented the spiritual trajectory of a generation with questions and answers. In the past ten years, we intertwined with the era with passion and insistence on dreams. At Zhihu, we hope that people can gain knowledge and comforts and form collective wisdom to contribute to a better world,” said Zhou Yuan, Zhihu’s founder, Chairman and CEO at the company’s tenth anniversary event in early 2021.
Users and content creators are the core of Zhihu, and the company’s motto is “Answer all questions”. Thus the prospectus opens with six stories from Zhihu communities to explain “What is Zhihu”. As of December 31, 2020, Zhihu had accumulated 315.3 million questions and answers contributed by 43.1 million content creators. The average MAUs increased by 33.0% from 56.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 75.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Zhihu users generated 25.7 million average daily searches in the fourth quarter of 2020, representing a 38.2% increase from the fourth quarter of 2019. Zhihu had 3.3 million average monthly active content creators in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Zhihu monetizes through online advertising, paid membership, content-commerce solutions, and other services such as online education and e-commerce related services. Zhihu’s revenue increased from RMB670.5 million in 2019 to RMB1.4 billion (US$207.2 million) in 2020, up 101.7%. The net loss was RMB1.0 billion in 2019 and RMB517.6 million (US$79.3 million) in 2020. The gross profit increased by 142.7% from RMB312.3 million in 2019 to RMB757.8 million for the same period in 2020.
The monetization of China’s online content community is at an early stage with significant growth potential. The market size in terms of revenue increased from RMB38.6 billion in 2015 to RMB275.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to increase to RMB1.3 trillion in 2025, representing a CAGR of 30.3% from 2019, according to CIC.
“We started investing in Zhihu in 2011. We understand that building content and communities takes patience and effort. As a result, we have been supportive of the team’s strategic decisions and were willing and ready to walk the long journey with the company,” said Duane Kuang, Founding Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners.
“Zhihu now has clear advantages over competitors and has shown an acceleration in user growth and commercialization. We look forward to seeing the company serving more users and bringing forth a greater variety of contents,” Kuang said.
About Qiming Venture Partners
Founded in 2006, Qiming Venture Partners is a leading China venture capital firm with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seattle, Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Currently Qiming Venture Partners manages nine US Dollar funds and six RMB funds with $5.9 billion in assets under management. Since our establishment, we have invested in outstanding companies in the TMT and healthcare industries at the early and growth stages.
Since our debut, we have backed over 380 fast-growing and innovative companies. Over 130 companies are already listed on NYSE, NASDAQ, HKEx, Gretai Securities Market, Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or achieved exit through M&A and other means. There are also over 40 portfolio companies that have achieved unicorn status.
Many of our portfolio companies are today’s most influential firms in their respective sectors, including Xiaomi (SEHK:1810), Meituan (SEHK:3690), Bilibili (NASDAQ:BILI), Roborock (SHSE:688169), Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (SHSE: 603087), Tigermed (SZSE:300347, SEHK:3347), Zai Lab (NASDAQ:ZLAB, SEHK:9688), Venus MedTech (SEHK:2500), CanSino Biologics (SEHK:6185, SHSE:688185), Schrödinger (NASDAQ:SDGR), APT Medical (SHSE:688617), Sanyou Medical (SHSE:688085), AmoyDx (SZSE:300685), Berry Genomics (SZSE:000710), SinocellTech (SHSE: 688520), WeDoctor Group, and UBTech among many others.