About Inke

Inke

Inke is a mobile live-streaming platform launched in May 2015 by Beijing Milaiwu Network Technology, and a pioneer of China's mobile live-streaming boom. Founded in Beijing in 2015 by Feng Yousheng, who served as chairman and chief executive, Inke let users broadcast live video from their phones, watch performances including live singing and karaoke, interact in real time and send virtual gifts bought with the platform's virtual currency. It grew with extraordinary speed, reporting about 3 million registered users and more than 60,000 active streamers within half a year, about 194.5 million registered users by the end of 2017, and a 15.3 percent share of China's mobile live-streaming market in 2017, when it was the country's second-largest mobile live-streaming company by revenue. In July 2018 it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as 3700.HK, described as the first entertainment live-streaming stock there. Its parent rebranded as Inkeverse Group in 2022 and diversified into social networking, dating and micro-dramas.

Founding in Beijing in 2015

Inke was founded in 2015 and launched in May of that year, just as faster mobile networks and falling data costs made broadcasting from a phone practical for ordinary users. Its operator was Beijing Milaiwu Network Technology, and its founder Feng Yousheng led the company through its growth, listing and later diversification. The company's own investor site states that the Inke app, launched in 2015, pioneered the mobile live-streaming trend in China. That claim is supported by timing: Inke arrived before the peak frenzy of 2016, when more than 200 live-streaming apps were counted in China and the market reached about 25 billion renminbi according to Credit Suisse data cited in later coverage.

The product was mobile-first at a time when older Chinese live platforms such as Six Rooms and YY were rooted in desktop showrooms. On Inke anyone with a phone could become a streamer, and anyone could watch, comment and gift in real time. Early content centred on singing, performance and everyday broadcasting by young hosts, a format that proved highly engaging and highly monetisable through virtual gifts.

Explosive early growth

Inke later reported that within half a year of launch it had attracted 3 million registered users and more than 60,000 active livestreamers. By the time of its listing filings the numbers were far larger. Its prospectus, citing consultancy Frost & Sullivan, described Inke as China's largest live-streaming platform by number of active streamers and the second-largest by revenue and by paying users. At the end of 2017 it had about 194.5 million registered users, and Feng Yousheng's open letter at listing put the figure at over 200 million registered members in three years.

Usage was already cooling from its peak when the filings appeared. The prospectus reported 25.18 million monthly active users and 652,000 monthly paying users in the fourth quarter of 2017, down 16 percent and 74 percent respectively from the same period in 2016, and about 25.3 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2018. Revenue likewise fell 9 percent, from 4.33 billion renminbi in 2016 to 3.94 billion renminbi in 2017, while the net loss narrowed from 1.47 billion renminbi in 2016 to about 239 million renminbi in 2017. Those figures capture both halves of the Inke story: category leadership in a new market, and a market that began consolidating almost as quickly as it had exploded.

How Inke made money

Inke generated most of its revenue from live streaming, where users purchased Inke Diamonds, its virtual currency, to buy virtual items and gifts for streamers. Gifts expressed support, bought visibility in a streamer's room and formed the core of the wanghong, or internet celebrity, economy that live platforms industrialised. The platform shared revenue with broadcasters, aligning its income with the popularity of its hosts, of whom it had the largest active pool in China according to Frost & Sullivan.

Investors funded the race for those hosts and users. The listing filing recorded a Series A round of about 18.6 million US dollars closing in early 2016, with Beijing Kunlun Tech, Duomi, GSR Ventures and others, and a Series B of about 45.6 million dollars closing in July 2017 that included Tencent. Before the offering Duomi held 14.6 percent of Inke, Kunlun 10.2 percent and Tencent 0.9 percent, with SAIF Partners and PurpleSky Capital also among earlier backers.

The failed backdoor listing

Inke's first route to public markets failed. In 2017 Shenzhen-listed media and marketing firm Shunya International Brand Consulting announced it would buy a stake of nearly 50 percent, reported in different coverage as over 50 percent, in Inke's developer Beijing Milaiwu for about 2.9 billion renminbi. After around six months of negotiation the deal collapsed in December 2017. Reports attributed the failure to policy uncertainty and disagreement on price. Inke then pursued a direct Hong Kong listing instead, filing in March 2018 with China International Capital Corporation, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank as sponsors.

The filing also disclosed the regulatory friction of the live era: Inke said its Beijing subsidiary had been fined twice, for a combined 50,000 renminbi, for inappropriate content broadcast by streamers on the app, at a time when Chinese regulators were cracking down on pornographic and violent material across live platforms.

Hong Kong IPO in July 2018

Inke began trading in Hong Kong on 12 July 2018, three years after launch, having become a unicorn within that period according to company profiles. It priced 300 million shares at 3.85 Hong Kong dollars, the bottom of its indicated range, raising about 1.05 billion Hong Kong dollars, around 134 million US dollars. The shares opened at 4.32 Hong Kong dollars and rose on debut, closing higher in the first sessions. Inke presented itself, and was widely described, as the first entertainment live-streaming stock on the Hong Kong exchange and the first publicly listed live-streaming company from mainland China.

The company said it would use the proceeds to diversify its business and content, fund marketing and pursue strategic investments and acquisitions. The listing came in a crowded season: Huya had listed in New York in May 2018, and Bilibili and iQiyi had listed on Nasdaq in March, as China's video generation went public together.

Competition and revenue decline

After listing, the structural problem intensified. Short-video giants added live streaming to enormous existing audiences: Kuaishou, which had added a live section in 2016, announced more than 100 million daily live-streaming viewers in December 2019, while ByteDance's Douyin and Tencent-backed game streamers Huya and Douyu consolidated their own segments. Inke's total revenue fell 15.3 percent year on year in 2019 to 3.3 billion renminbi, and adjusted net income fell 88 percent, from 596.3 million renminbi in 2018 to 71.5 million renminbi, according to its annual report coverage. The company attributed the drop partly to fierce competition.

Inke's answer, announced in 2019, was to merge interactive entertainment with social networking. It acquired Jimu, a Generation Z interest-based social app, for 85 million US dollars, and launched Duiyuan, a matchmaking and dating app. By 2019 the monthly active users of its combined apps, including Inke, Jimu and Duiyuan, reached 29.8 million, up 17 percent year on year, even as the flagship live business shrank.

Rebranding as Inkeverse Group

In June 2022 the company officially changed its name from Inke Limited to Inkeverse Group Limited, signalling a strategic move toward an all-scenario social platform. Its investor site describes core businesses spanning live streaming, social platforms, micro-dramas or playlets, overseas markets and other sectors, driven by a diversified product matrix that later included products named in company materials such as Jimu, Duiyuan and Super Like. In the first half of 2022 the group reported total revenue of 4.0 billion renminbi, with social networking products contributing 69.6 percent of revenue, live streaming 22.2 percent and dating products 5.5 percent, a complete inversion of the original model in which live streaming had supplied nearly everything.

The group also stated that it was exploring Web 3.0, blockchain and artificial intelligence, language typical of its 2022 metaverse-era repositioning. The Inke app itself remained the founding flagship within that matrix, but the corporate story had moved from a single live app to a portfolio.

Micro-dramas and the next pivot

Inkeverse then followed the next Chinese content craze, micro-dramas: very short scripted serials made for phones. Later reporting by Bamboo Works records that micro-dramas grew to 19.1 percent of group revenue, bringing in 1.31 billion renminbi in 2024. The same reporting describes the company's subsequent decision to exit that business after about four years, selling its 40 percent stake in Guangzhou Kuaichuang Network Technology for 80 million renminbi, as AI-generated dramas from larger rivals undercut traditional production economics, and directing proceeds toward AI computing infrastructure and data-centre plans. The pattern, pioneering a format, scaling it, then pivoting when giants commoditise it, had by then repeated across Inke's whole corporate life.

Group results for the first half of 2025 showed revenue of about 2.68 billion renminbi, down from 3.53 billion in the same period a year earlier, with average monthly active users across major products of about 20.2 million. The listed vehicle founded on a single Beijing live app in 2015 thus remained active a decade later, but as a diversified and still-changing social entertainment group.

Significance in China's live-streaming history

Inke's significance is secure even where its market position faded. It proved in 2015 that live broadcasting could be a mass mobile behaviour in China rather than a desktop showroom activity, built the largest active streamer pool in the country, reached roughly 200 million registered users in three years, and became the first entertainment live-streaming company to list in Hong Kong. Its filings remain one of the clearest public records of the economics of the 2016 live-streaming boom, including the speed with which paying users and revenue could fall once short-video platforms absorbed live audiences. Any history of Chinese mobile entertainment passes through Inke.