chinese content giants that had flocked to India and were beginning to dominate the crowding market here are finding that there may not be enough space for them all.
Kwai, a short video app by Tencent-backed Kuaishou, and Alibaba-backed VMate are rethinking their India strategy as Chinese giant ByteDance’s popular platform TikTok races ahead to capture a large share of the domestic market.
Kwai, which is notorious for its sleazy content and has a borderline child porn content problem in India, has stopped marketing operations in the country, said three industry people aware of the developments. VMate has slashed payments for its content creators who were crucial to the platform becoming popular in India.
“Kwai has stopped spending on customer acquisitions and creators in India because the top executives think the return of investment in this market and model is very low,” said an executive with a leading internet company in Beijing, speaking on condition of anonymity as did the other two.
“VMate, which is focused on lower-tier content creators, hasn’t been able to find a way to convert the spends on this market into revenue,” said another person familiar with the developments at the company. “They have reduced the compensation for their creators, who in turn have many other platforms to flock to that are ready to pay them.”
India’s short-video market is about a year old but gained traction rapidly because of its ease of use and viral content. Anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can create and broadcast short videos on apps and get paid for them based on the popularity or virality of the videos.
中国的内容巨头纷纷涌入印度，并开始在印度的拥挤市场上占据主导地位，他们发现，可能没有足够的空间容纳所有人。
腾讯（Tencent）旗下的短视频应用Kuaishou和阿里巴巴（Alibaba）旗下的VMate正在重新考虑其印度战略，因为腾讯（tentence）旗下的热门平台TikTok正竞相抢占国内市场的大部分份额。
三位了解事态发展的业内人士表示，因内容低俗而臭名昭著、印度儿童色情内容问题严重的葵已停止在印度的营销业务。VMate已经大幅削减了对该平台在印度流行至关重要的内容创作者的薪酬。
北京一家领先互联网公司的一位不愿透露姓名的高管表示：“Kwai已经停止在印度的客户收购和创作者方面的支出，因为高管们认为在这个市场和模式上的投资回报率非常低。”。
另一位熟悉该公司发展情况的人士表示：“VMate专注于较低层次的内容创作者，但一直未能找到将在这个市场上的支出转化为收入的方法。”。“他们已经减少了对创作者的补偿，而创作者又有许多其他平台可以蜂拥而至，随时可以付钱给他们。”
印度的短视频市场已有一年的历史，但由于其易用性和病毒式内容，迅速获得了市场的吸引力。任何拥有智能手机和互联网连接的人都可以在应用程序上创建和播放短视频，并根据视频的流行程度或病毒性获得付费。
TikTok, with 52 million monthly active users in India, leads the pack of short-video apps. The platform, popular among urban as well as rural users in the country, has consistently ranked among the top five apps on Google Play store in India for more than six months now. It has gained enough traction for domestic brands such as online fashion retailer Myntra and matrimony platform Shaadi.com to advertise on the platform.
VMate and Kwai, although they rank among the top platforms in the country on Google PlayStore, haven’t been able to sustain their pools of creators to retain users.
“If you are building a community in the same space as TikTok, you need to spend a lot of money because content creators and consumers in the space have many options,” says Pratik Poddar, vice-president at Nexus Venture Partners, a VC firm. “For Kwai or VMate, the willingness or intent to invest very heavily in the India market in terms of money and effort does not seem right at a time when TikTok has managed to get a significant hold over the market.”
This is evident in the slashed spending on content creators by VMate and Kwai, whose owner Kuaishou is valued at $18 billion. “Until 6-7 months ago, Kwai was paying around Rs 12,000 per month to 200 top creators,” says Kimmy Nagpal, a fashion designer in Delhi who was a paid creator on several platforms including Kwai and VMate. “Now, they barely have 5-10 paid creators. After they stopped paying, creators moved to other platforms.” She says VMate, too, has shrunk its number of paid creators as well as reduced payments to them.
FactorDaily has reached out to VMate and Kwai for comments on the developments but did not receive a response from the companies.
TikTok在印度每月拥有5200万活跃用户，在短视频应用程序方面处于领先地位。这个在印度城市和农村用户中都很受欢迎的平台，已经连续六个多月在印度的Google Play store排名前五。它已经为国内品牌赢得了足够的吸引力，如在线时尚零售商Myntra和婚恋平台Shaadi.com在该平台上做广告。
VMate和Kwai虽然在谷歌PlayStore上排名全国顶级平台，但它们还无法维持自己的创作者池来留住用户。
风险投资公司NexusVenturePartners的副总裁普拉蒂克波达尔（PratikPoddar）说：“如果你要在TikTok所在的同一空间建立一个社区，你需要花很多钱，因为该空间的内容创作者和消费者有很多选择。”。“对Kwai或VMate来说，在TikTok成功控制印度市场之际，在资金和努力方面，对印度市场进行大量投资的意愿或意图似乎并不正确。”
这一点在VMate和Kwai大幅削减内容创作者开支中表现得尤为明显，后者的所有者Kuaishou价值180亿美元。“直到6-7个月前，Kwai每月向200位顶级创作者支付约12000卢比，”新德里时装设计师Kimmy Nagpal说，他是Kwai和VMate等多个平台的付费创作者。“现在，他们只有5-10个付费创作者。在他们停止付费之后，创作者们转向了其他平台。”她说，VMate也缩减了付费创作者的数量，同时减少了对他们的支付。
FactorDaily已经联系VMate和Kwai，征求他们对事态发展的意见，但没有收到这些公司的回复。
Kwai, meanwhile, has introduced a video-making app called MV Master. “It is easier to monetise (and get ads) for a tool rather than monetising a platform,” said the first unnamed person quoted earlier.
Chinese app makers have a long history with recognising the market need and making appropriate tools for a market. A case in point is SHAREit, a platform that allows peer-to-peer media sharing and has become a favourite in India and other emerging markets.
Chinese content giants are in the midst of a battle in their home turf as well. The Chinese market is rife with apps such as ByteDance’s Douyin (TikTok in English) and Kuaishou (Kwai in English), apart from those of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (the BAT trio), which have Lu Ke, Nani and Weishi, respectively.
Although it is not core business for the BAT trio, the short video space in China is getting too big to be ignored. Over one-third of the country’s 1.4 billion people are active on these apps every month. The popularity of TikTok has giants like Tencent, which owns messaging app WeChat, worried with news reports suggesting that the use of instant messaging services has waned in China amid a growing obsession with short videos.
Rivals Douyin (TikTok) and Kuaishou (Kwai) had started out with targeting different sets of users. Kwai was more focused on the massy lower-tier segment in China while TikTok focused on tier 1 and 2 users. But as the battle intensifies, both the platforms are chasing more users including through expansion to markets such as India, where the population and internet ubiquity makes for an attractive bargain.
与此同时，Kwai推出了一款名为MV Master的视频制作应用。“为一个工具进行货币化（并获得广告）比为一个平台进行货币化要容易得多，”第一位不愿透露姓名的人士早些时候说。
中国的应用程序制造商有着悠久的历史，他们认识到市场的需求，并为市场开发合适的工具。SHAREit就是一个很好的例子，它是一个允许点对点媒体共享的平台，已经成为印度和其他新兴市场的宠儿。
中国的内容巨头们也在自己的地盘上展开一场战斗。中国市场上除了百度、阿里巴巴和腾讯（BAT trio）分别拥有路可、纳尼和威士外，还有很多应用程序，如ByteDance的豆瓣（TikTok）和葵花（Kuaishou）。
虽然这不是蝙蝠三人组的核心业务，但中国的短视频空间越来越大，不容忽视。中国14亿人口中，超过三分之一的人每月都在使用这些应用程序。TikTok的受欢迎程度让腾讯（Tencent）等短信应用微信（WeChat）的巨头感到担忧，有新闻报道称，随着人们对短视频的日益痴迷，中国对即时通讯服务的使用有所减少。
竞争对手斗音（TikTok）和快寿（Kwai）一开始就瞄准了不同的用户群。Kwai更专注于中国庞大的低端市场，而TikTok则专注于一级和二级用户。但随着竞争的加剧，这两个平台都在追逐更多的用户，包括通过向印度等市场扩张，印度的人口和互联网普及率使得这一交易具有吸引力。
Earlier this year, FactorDaily reported how Chinese apps have taken over the Indian app ecosystem. The number of top Chinese apps in Google Play store in India almost tripled from 18 in December 2017 to 44 12 months later. Most of these apps fell in the categories of either utility or entertainment.
The names and even the content on many of these apps are similar: there’s Bigo Live, LiveMe and UpLive for live streaming, where girls from the hinterlands login on their phone screens and talk to men manning shops and grocery stores and ask them about their day. There are short video apps including TikTok, Kwai, VMate, ToGetU, LIKE, WeLike and a bunch of others that have an endless stream of short videos of women dancing in the fields or men tripping over from cycles. The next big thing in social media aspirants are platforms like Helo and NewsDog, apps such as LivU and ZakZak promise to help users meet “hot girls,” while apps like Vidmate and Videobuddy provide pirated versions of the latest movies and serials. The Chinese apps are running a wholesome entertainment factory for mobile internet users in India.
“The Chinese have cracked the online distribution model in India by spending disproportionate money on acquiring paid users but are struggling with the content model and engagement,” says Prateek Lal, founder of Mumbai-based digital content company Talent Dekho.
Lal says the Chinese apps are banking on existing creators to keep generating new content for their platforms. But their lack of understanding of the Indian culture and market has prevented them from finding and grooming new creators. This, according to Lal, is resulting in a mad scramble across the Chinese companies in India for the same set of creators and a similar user market.
Amid this, a bunch of former employees of VMate in India have started a new short video platform targeted at the tier 1 audience, called ToGetU. “In a way, ToGetU is filling the gaps of VMate. It is focused on tier 1 Indian users, a relatively easier-to-monetize market,” said the first person quoted in the story. ToGetU has 10 million downloads and has ranked among the top 10 apps in the video player category in India for the last two months, according to data from SensorTower.
今年早些时候，FactorDaily报道了中国应用如何接管印度应用生态系统。在印度的谷歌Play store中，中国顶级应用的数量从2017年12月的18个增加到12个月后的44个，几乎翻了两番。这些应用程序中的大多数都属于实用程序或娱乐类。
这些应用程序的名字甚至内容都很相似：有Bigo Live、LiveMe和UpLive可供直播，来自内地的女孩在手机屏幕上登录，与男人在商店和杂货店聊天，询问他们的一天。有一些短视频应用程序，包括TikTok、Kwai、VMate、ToGetU、LIKE、WeLike和其他一些程序，其中有一个关于妇女在田里跳舞或男子从自行车上绊倒的无休止的短视频流。社交媒体爱好者的下一件大事是Helo和NewsDog等平台，LivU和ZakZak等应用承诺帮助用户结识“辣妹”，而Vidmate和Videobuddy等应用则提供最新电影和连续剧的盗版版本。这些中国应用程序正在印度为移动互联网用户运营一家健康的娱乐工厂。
孟买数字内容公司Talent Dekho的创始人普拉蒂克•拉尔（Prateek Lal）表示：“中国在印度打破了在线分销模式，将不成比例的资金用于收购付费用户，但在内容模式和参与度方面却举步维艰。”。
拉尔说，中国的应用程序正指望现有的创作者继续为他们的平台生成新内容。但他们对印度文化和市场缺乏了解，因此无法找到和培养新的创作者。据Lal称，这导致在印度的中国公司疯狂争夺同一套创作者和类似的用户市场。
在此过程中，印度VMate的一批前雇员开始了一个新的短视频平台，面向一级受众，名为ToGetU。“在某种程度上，ToGetU正在填补VMate的空白。报道中援引的第一位人士说：“该公司主要关注印度一级用户，这是一个相对容易实现货币化的市场。”。据SensorTower的数据显示，ToGetU拥有1000万下载量，在过去两个月里，ToGetU在印度视频播放器类应用中排名前十。
https://factordaily.com/kwai-vmate-dwarfed-by-tiktok-in-india/
