Profile Research of Fenda

Knowledge-based Economy

June, 2016
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What is Fenda?
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What is Fenda?
• Fenda is a question-
and-answer paid service
and was launched in
May, in China.
• The service is like
Reddit’s AMA (ask me
anything) but based on
voice.
• Users must pay to listen
to answers.
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Fenda’s User Interface Top Charts: Questions/New

answerers/Highest rated answerers

Question

Free answer in a limited time.

Pay a yuan for the answer.

Paid visits

Hot Listen Discovery Profile

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Features Tutorial
• Fenda is a question-and-answer paid service.
• An answer is capped at 60 seconds.
• Fenda runs on WeChat - the biggest message platform in China.

• Users may make money by either asking or answering questions. Fenda takes 10% from each
transaction.
• Answering Questions:
• Those with knowledge (answerer) can set a price from 1 yuan (US$0.15) to a few thousand yuan
for answering a question. The answers are delivered via voice message, capped at 60 seconds.
• Answerers ranged from popular artists, online celebrities, high-profile businessmen to China’s
largest companies. eg. Zhang Ziyi of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Wang Sicong, the son of
China’s richest man.
• Asking Questions:

• Users pay the preset price and ask any kind of question to whomever they want on the site. For
one yuan, other users can simply eavesdrop and listen to the reply.
• Money is returned to users whose questions are ignored.
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Monetization
Fenda Question&Answer Online Service

Question

As the son of China’s richest

man, is there anything you can’t
afford?

Price for a question: RMB$3000

Asked by
length of the answer
Answered by
A yuan for eavesdropping

Eavesdroppers: 22,812 ppl

Profit: $11,406/person (split to questioner and answerer)

Questioner’s profit: $8,406 Answerer’s profit: $14,406

Yuan Yuan
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Tractions
• Over 1M paid users

• 500K voice messages recorded

• Total transaction: RMB$18M since launched

• Daily purchase: over 190K times

• Repeat purchase: 43%

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More Tractions
• Celebrity answerer: Wang Sicong answered 32 questions in
3 days (including questions about his sex life); total income:
over RMB$250K.

• Experts in vertical fields

• Medical: 5,020 answerers

• Education: 4,366 answerers

• Career: 3,371 answerers

• Organizations: over 800

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The Team
• Founder: Ji Xiao Hua

• Founded Guokr.com, a platform that specialises in

popular science: Content, Q&A, Forum, MOOC

• Founded Zaihang.com, a knowledge-sharing O2O

website.

• Launched Fenda on May 15th, under zaihang.com

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Financial Stage

• Completed USD$25M A round in 24 days of its

launch (with Zaihang.com)

• Valuation: over USD$100M

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Competitive Landscape
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Competitor - Zhihu
• China’s biggest Q&A platform (50M users, DAU: 13M

daily visit: 33 min, 10M questions, 34M answers)
• Text-only site
• Launched paid service on April 1st
• Runs on WeChat, shared with friends on
 The secret of Zhihu is:

WeChat Moments
• Zhihu Live, launched on May 14th (Fenda: May 15th) Pay to see the answer.
• Voice-enabled version of the Ask Me Anything; Celebrities answer questions during a certain
time.
• Users pay to enter the group chat and submit questions.
• Focused on a particular theme: serious questions
• Founder of Innovation Works, Kai Fu Lee earned RMB$100K in an hour
• Zhihu 3.0: launched on June 6th, same as Fenda
• Financial Stage: B round - USD$22M, C round - USD$55M
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Potential Player - Anchor FM

• Voice based

• Launched on February 9th

• Free app that makes podcasting

easy.

• Financial Stage: Seed round -

USD$1.6M
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Market Size &

Challenges
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Sharing Economy Market

Ref: PWC 2014

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Sharing Economy Market

• Potential Value: $335 billion by 2025 (+25% each year)

• Peer-to-peer crowdfunding could grow the quickest of all (Crowdfunded knowledge - Q&A platforms).

Ref: PWC 2014

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Challenges
• Fenda is too entertaining. Its monetization comes
from celebrity privacy rather than knowledge.
Therefore, hard to keep it exciting and fresh. (While
Zhihu is focused on knowledge.)

• There isn’t a review system on Fenda yet. Hard to

prove expertise. (While users may review answers
on Zhihu after purchase.)
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References
• https://theinitium.com/article/20160608-mainland-fenda/

• http://wallstreetcn.com/node/251679

• https://read01.com/JzDNN5.html

• https://www.clickz.com/2016/05/31/is-audio-platform-anchor-the-
next-big-thing-for-social-media

• https://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology/publications/assets/pwc-
consumer-intelligence-series-the-sharing-economy.pdf

• http://www.pwc.co.uk/issues/megatrends/collisions/
sharingeconomy/the-sharing-economy-sizing-the-revenue-
opportunity.html