Chinese Internet startups

Venture capital firms are increasingly betting on Chinese Internet startups, making China the second largest recipient of venture capital financing behind the U.S. in terms of deal volume last year.

According to, venture capital and private equity firms in China poured a total of $3.3 billion into Chinese Internet startups in 2011. Another research report from Morgan Stanley China found that about 40 Internet startups in China have thus far issued initial public offerings (IPOs).

On average, close to 60, 000 Chinese Internet startups have had a successful IPO listing.

This shows that the competition is fierce in the Chinese Internet domain and the IPO is an important threshold. Still, there are other thresholds these companies must also pass. Of the 40 Chinese Internet IPO companies mentioned, 60 percent are currently listed below the issue price, and only 40 percent of companies are above issue price.

The following is a list of the top 10 most successful Internet startups in China:

QQ.com is China’s largest and most visited Internet service portal.With the strategic goal to provide users with a one-stop online life service, QQ.com successfully brings together China’s largest Internet community, boasting 711.7 million active QQ user accounts and the highest numbers of online users at 176, 375, 723. In November 2012, QQ.com placed 9th in, just behind Twitter.

Baidu is the Google of China. The No.1 Chinese language search engine provides a “simple and reliable” search experience and holds 80 percent of the Chinese search engine market.

Sina.com is the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal. Users can read news, participate in online discussions, and browse photos. Sina’s blogs are extremely popular in China.

A Chinese version of Twitter, Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. As one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, it brings together over 368 million users and averages around 100 million postings daily.

Taobao is a popular consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online marketplace in China. With more than 800 million product listings and more than 370 million registered users, Taobao ranks 15th in Alexa’s internet global rankings.

China’s homegrown YouTube, Youku is the most popular video sharing website in China. It partners with 250 television companies across China and Asia, showing full-length episodes of TV shows and series.

Tudou is China’s second most popular website for watching, sharing and hosting videos, placing 65th in Alexa’s global Internet ranking. As home to the world’s largest bandwidth users, Tudou.com moves more than 1 petabyte per day of content to 7 million users. On March 12, 2012, Tudou was acquired by #1 Youku in a stock-for-stock transaction.

Ctrip is the largest travel booking web site in China.

Sohu is another search engine that provides news and information, entertainment, and communications. Sohu is best known for its live broadcasts of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Dangdang is the largest Internet bookstore in China.

163.com is a rapidly growing online gaming web portal. The site’s primary draw is multi-player online role-playing gamers. Its e-mail services are another strong point. Many people in China are using 163.com as their preferred local email service provider.