QuVideo — with huge foreign user base — raises $61 million ahead of IPO
Based in Hangzhou, QuVideo makes popular smartphone video apps that help users in the U.S. and Europe to make entertaining videos for TikTok and Instagram. But is it a security threat?
Founded in 2013 in Hangzhou, QuVideo makes mobile video-editing apps that have become popular with users outside of China who need tools to make videos for TikTok and other video-sharing platforms. QuVideo announced (in Chinese) this week it had raised 400 million yuan ($61.24 million) in a series C round of financing. The company is also preparing (in Chinese) for an initial public offering in China.
Focussed on the overseas market, QuVideo’s mobile apps are among the most popular video-editing apps on Android phones.
- VivaVideo, QuVideo’s flagship app, allows users to load clips, trim videos, and add filters and special effects in a storyline-style editing board on their mobile phones.
- Users from over 200 countries, 85% of whom are outside of China (per Sohu, in Chinese), use QuVideo’s apps to edit videos for social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and WeChat.
- CEO Hán Shèng 韩晟 said the company’s apps have over 1.2 billion users globally as of the first half of 2020.
- The pandemic accelerated user growth: The number of QuVideo’s overseas users increased 47% between March and May this year. As Western countries entered lockdowns, QuVideo’s users surged 68% in Europe and 48% in the U.S., according to an interview with Han Sheng (in Chinese).
QuVideo faces allegations from overseas researchers and government authorities of posing security threats and conducting subscription fraud.
- The Indian government in 2017 identified VivaVideo as either spyware or “malicious-ware,” and banned the country’s military from installing it. VivaVideo is one of the 42 popular Chinese apps in India, including WeChat and Weibo, that were listed. QuVideo is now completely banned by the Indian government, along with several hundred other Chinese apps.
- UpStream, a London-based mobile technology company, reported that VivaVideo runs fraudulent adware, triggers premium subscription purchases without users’ awareness, and requests sensitive user permissions that are unnecessary for video editing, such as precise GPS location.
- QuVideo did not respond to The China Project’s inquiry regarding these reports.
With new funding and the upcoming IPO, Han Sheng said QuVideo will continue to expand its global market, even as other Chinese internet companies like TikTok face hurdles in the U.S.
- “TikTok’s experience is quite extreme, but in fact, Chinese mobile internet companies are generally (all) facing difficulties when going overseas,” Han Sheng said in an op-ed this August (in Chinese).
