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Xunlei

Xunlei – One Of The Top Internet Companies In China.

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Xunlei is a publicly-traded Chinese multinational technology company that was founded in 2003. Based in the technology sector, the company is mainly a provider of online services. It is one of the most widely used internet brands in the country but it is primarily famous for computing and blockchain technology. The headquarters of Xunlei is based in Shenzhen, China. It also has a subsidiary called Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technologies Co Ltd. Xunlei offers products and services to both individual and enterprise users and the solutions include cloud computing, download acceleration, blockchain, etc. It has also received several awards and accolades for its digital technology, and innovative products, and for consistently being one of the top internet companies in China. 

Story of Xunlei

Although Xunlei was officially founded in 2003, the company’s first prototype emerged in Silicon Valley, the USA in 2002. After one year, when Xunlei was established, Thunder 2 was released for the first time. Within the next year, the company witnessed an increase in the number of users and eventually released Xunlei 3 and Xunlei 4. In 2005, the company hosted a funding round in which it successfully raised $10 million approximately. In the same year, it also released Mini Thunder and Thunder 5. 2006 was a benchmark year for the company as it crossed 100 million users. Moreover, the company’s download-acceleration software became a software with the largest user scale. In 2007, Xunlei signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Google in Beijing. The company also incorporated many implementations in the cross-protocol download section. 

Xunlei
Image source: sinaimg.cn

Expansion

In 2008, the company released a chain of new products together including Thunder Software Assistant, Thunder Game, Thunder Security Assistant, and many more. Later that year, the company held a press conference regarding China’s internet content distribution. Again in 2009, a lot of new products and upgraded versions of some products were released. For example, Xunlei released its Home Digital Entertainment products and along with that launched Thunderbolt Heroes Web Game. In 2010, the number of Xunlei users exceeded the 300 million mark, and paid users reached 1 million. The company also released Thunder 7 that year, thus opening a new era for internet downloads. 

In 2011, it finally released its products for iPad, and the Mac version for Thunder was also released. The company’s online video site, Xunlei Kankan became the first online video site in China to achieve high definition on the whole network. In 2013, the total Xunlei users reached 460 million and the paid users reached 5.2 million. Earlier in 2014, the company received a huge amount of funding of $200 million from Xiaomi followed by which it went public and got listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. After the investment, Xioami also partnered with Xunlei to jointly release Star CDN. In 2017, it occupied 42nd place in the list of China’s top 100 internet companies. Recently, the company has released its BaaS platform such that users can deploy their chain with a click, thus making the process much more convenient. 

Jinbo Li – CEO of Xunlei

In April 2020, Jinbo Li became the Chairman and CEO of Xunlei. Li comes with industrial expertise of more than 20 years exclusively in China’s internet and technology sector. He is associated with the company from the very beginning as he helped in establishing and running the core R&D team of the company from 2004 to 2009. In 2010, Li left the company and worked for two other internet ventures for the next four years followed by which he founded Itui International Inc, a mobile application development company. Jinbo Li went to Shandong University followed by Peking University.

Justdial

VSS Mani, Started A Business On “Wedding Planning” But Was Not Satisfied And Founded Justdial.

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Justdial is an Indian start-up founded in 1996 for offering the public a huge database for conducting a local search. The website of Justdial contains information about any particular company or service from contact number, address, etc. to the details of service provided across the country. So, anyone can look up the website or mobile app of Justdial to find information about any local service that we usually don’t get on the internet. Justdial has more than 10,000 employees and has offices all over the country, like in New Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Chandigarh, etc. Its headquarters is based in Mumbai, India, and the majority of its stake is currently owned by Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited.

About Justdial

VSS Mani is the founder and CEO of Justdial. The company offers local search as its primary service and apart from that it has two other services, “Justdial Social” and “Search Plus Service.” The former is a service that involves aggregating content from various social media websites, news sources, etc and the latter is responsible for managing online transactions through various apps. Justdial has also entered foreign markets and that includes opening international offices in UAE, UK, USA, and Canada. In India, the company has a total of fifteen offices.

Justdial can be accessed from both mobile and computers. Apart from the official website of the company, it has launched individual mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Blackberry. After Justdial was launched it focussed on every aspect of growth, from expanding to new overseas markets to strengthening the company’s SME relationships. Some of the major investors of the company are SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, SAP Ventures, etc.

Justdial
Image source: startuptalky.com

History

VSS Mani, before founding Justdial, had several other business ideas but none of them survived in the market for a long time. Mani agrees that he has learned from the mistakes of his past business endeavors and finally made Justdial a successful brand. When Mani had the idea to develop a website with a huge database, he was working for a yellow page company. This was during the late 1980s when he thought of replacing the yellow pages with a huge database. The users will have access to the database so that they can call any service provider and receive the necessary information. Today, Justdial has a database of more than 29 million listings and over 500,000 active paid campaigns.

Growth and Expansion

Though Justdial was officially launched in 1996, Mani started working on the idea in 1994 with an investment of 50,000 rupees. He rented a garage and some PCs, borrowed furniture to start the groundwork, and also hired 5-6 employees. Justdial became a popular website within a few years and just a decade later the company launched an internet and mobile version of the database, Justdial.com. In 2011, the company was able to raise $10 million followed by $57 million in the next year. All the fundings were judiciously invested to launch new products, develop the brand, and expand geographically.

Justdial decided to go public in 2013 and out of the total 17.3 million shares, 13.5 million were offered to the public. The rest of the shares were given to the previous investors of the company at a rate of 530 rupees per share. The share price of Justdial saw many ups and downs as it went as high as 1894 rupees in August 2014 and then the next year decreased to a triple-digit number. In July 2021, Reliance Retail acquired a 66.95% stake in the company for 3,497 crore rupees. After these acquisitions, Reliance got access to the 25-year old database of the company and VSS Mani withheld his position as the CEO and MD of Justdial.

About the Founder

VSS Mani was born in Jamshedpur and was raised in Calcutta (now Kolkata). He pursued commerce for higher studies and founded three organizations. Mani’s entrepreneurial journey started with “AskMe” but due to improper timing, the business failed shortly. He also started a business on “Wedding Planning” but was not satisfied with the business model or the profit margin. Later with proper business strategies and thorough research, he founded Justdial and made it a huge success.

fiverr

Fiverr : A Two-way Platform for Selling and Buying Digital Services

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Every time a new company is launched, the setup requires a lot of pre-requisite. From designing a logo to maintaining a company’s blog, everything needs to be done at a professional level. For doing this, companies generally hire freelancers. Now, instead of looking for individual freelancers and separately hiring them, how convenient would it be to have access to a single platform from where you can communicate with freelance contractors for all your requirements?

Fiverr, which can also be designated as an online virtual shopping mall, is literally the best and most wanted site for any freelancers and business companies. The service provider can earn some extra cash through this, and the companies can also get their job done in a hassle-free manner.

On 1st of February 2010, Micha Kaufman and Shai Wininger launched Fiverr. The company has its headquarters based in Tel Aviv, Israel providing its services across the world. Fiverr is available in 5 different languages, including English, Spanish, French, Dutch and Portuguese.

Fiverr Founders
Image Source: fiverr.com

History of the $5 Fiverr ‘Gig’

Kaufman and Wininger wanted to create something new, which would break the regular credence of working hours from 9 to 5. So, they came up with an idea of creating a website with a variety of online services like logo designing, data entry, digital marketing, voice translation and many more. Here people could work according to their comfort neglecting the 9 to 5 job scenario. So, the two young entrepreneurs created a single platform which is capable of providing almost every digital service under one roof.

The company started succeeding at a very fast pace such that within a year it had grown 600% in transaction volume. The company received its first funding of $1 million in 1st June 2010 from Guy Gamzu and other angel investors. On 3rd May 2012, the company announced that it had raised another $15 million in the second round of funding from Accel Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners summing the total raised fund to $20 million. By this time, the company had 40 employees working in its different offices spread over Israel, U.S and Europe.

The Growth of an Innovative Business Ever Witnessed by our Economy

In Fiverr, the minimum charge for every service is $5 and might extend up to $1,000 depending on the sellers and the quality of work. This system was started in January 2012 and allowed the sellers to earn more in exchange for their services after ten successful transactions. The services provided by Fiverr are known as ‘Gig’.

The $5 strategy attracted millions of customers from around the world, and by the end of 2011, the company was already providing 70,000 gigs. In 2012, the figure reached around 1.3 million with an increasing number of clients as well as service providers. By the end of this year, Fiverr witnessed an increase in sales by 190%, providing 4,000 new services, i.e. ‘Gigs’ daily.

The expansion of this leading marketplace resulted in the opening of a new office in New York in 2013.

Since 2013, Fiverr.com has acquired a position in the top 200 popular sites list of the world, and its Alexa rank is 291. By June 2013, Fiverr provided over 1.7 million Gigs to customers around 200 countries. The number of categories expanded to 120, which even included Arts & Crafts, Astrology and Gift cards. In December 2013, Fiverr launched its iOS app, followed by releasing the Android app in March 2014.

In August 2014, Fiverr raised $30 million in Series C funding from the existing investors along with Qumra Capital and private investors. This funding promised a larger and new workplace, where the sellers and customers can connect at a global level. In October 2014, Fiverr expanded the Gig service by launching the website in four different languages. Realizing the need for global connectivity, the strategies of Fiverr always played the ace in the digital marketplace.

In November 2015, Fiverr raised another $60 million in the funding round led by existing investors along with Square Peg Capital. With this, the company valued $550 million at that time. By now, the main target of Fiverr was to connect with every single freelancer out there and expand its Gig economy side. In November 2015, Fiverr raised another $60 million in the funding round led by existing investors along with Square Peg Capital. With this, the company valued $550 million at that time. By now, the main target of Fiverr was to connect with every single freelancer out there and expand its Gig economy.

In August 2016, Fiverr opened a new office in San Francisco, and the same year, Fiverr announced DCX Growth Accelerator as its new Global Agency of Record.

Latest Acquisitions and Partnership

In January 2018, AND CO came under the acquisition of Fiverr and the freelance software of AND CO was made free.

In February 2019, Fiverr announced the acquisition of ClearVoice, a content marketing platform. In June 2019, the company announced a new partnership with Lily Singh.

In July 2019, Fiverr introduced its Gaming store providing services like game development, game designing etc.