Kuaishou, China’s second-largest short video app, is currently gearing up for another push into overseas markets after several failed attempts in the past few years.
At present, the company plans to aggressively expand to Brazil and Indonesia, two countries containing the largest amount of daily active users. According to a study made by GlobeNewswire, the Brazilian social commerce market is expected to grow 44.9% year-on-year to a total size of over 2.2 billion USD. For Kuaishou, these two areas are key to its overseas commercialisation.
Furthermore, Kuaishou plans to team up with third-party companies and form local teams to increase online traffic as well as user retention. In Brazil, for instance, the short video platform has been chasing after telenovela creators and native working-class users so as to better cater to local interests. This move could serve as a game-changer for the platform, whose overseas app “Kwai” in 2017 previously suffered from low growth and user retention.
Compared to TikTok, the world’s short video platform juggernaut, the number of daily active Kwai users in the Brazilian market remains much lower. In terms of daily user time, however, Kwai has ranked first in the Brazilian market and Kuaishou products have reached a 20% market penetration rate.
Overall, Kuaishou demonstrates perseverance as it double down on its long-term overseas strategy despite having faced heavy market headwinds. Looking ahead, Kuaishou intends to boost investments and focus more on the development of key regions by honing in on local users’ interests. As for whether or not Kuaishou’s revamped strategy will usher in a turnaround, only time will tell.
