About Huajiao Live

Huajiao Live

Huajiao Live, also rendered in English reporting as Peppercorn Live, is a Chinese entertainment live-streaming platform launched in May 2015 through Beijing Mijing Hefeng Technology. Backed by Qihoo 360 and personally promoted by 360 founder Zhou Hongyi, Huajiao let users broadcast live video and audio, watch entertainment performances, interact with hosts and send virtual gifts. Huafang Group's Hong Kong listing filings describe Huajiao as one of China's leading online entertainment live-streaming platforms, recording 207.1 million cumulative registered users and about 10.1 million registered streamers by 31 August 2021. In 2019 Huajiao merged with Six Rooms, the desktop live pioneer founded in 2006, to form Huafang Group, which listed in Hong Kong in December 2022 as 3611.HK and was delisted in December 2024. Huajiao itself remained the group's flagship mobile product throughout.

Launch in May 2015

Huajiao was launched in 2015, dated precisely to May 2015 in Huafang's listing materials, as the mobile flagship product incubated by 360. Its operating company was Beijing Mijing Hefeng Technology, rendered in some English translations as Beijing Mijing and Wind. The launch came at the crest of China's mobile live-streaming wave: networks were faster, data tariffs had fallen sharply, and, as Huafang chief executive Yu Dan later put it, the industry entered an era of live broadcasting for all. Yu Dan, a graduate of Xi'an Jiaotong University, was a co-founder of Huajiao and led its project incubation inside 360.

Zhou Hongyi's involvement was unusually public for an investor. He promoted Huajiao from its establishment, appeared in broadcasts, interacted frequently with Wang Sicong, who went on to found the rival Panda Live, and staged celebrity events such as a Peppercorn Night attended by the actress Fan Bingbing. The strategy was to use star appearances and heavy promotion to cut through a market in which Inke, Yizhibo and dozens of other platforms launched in the same period and quickly raised multiple financing rounds.

Financing from 360 and Tiange

Huajiao's early financing reflected that backing. Contemporary accounts record that it successively obtained financing from Qihoo 360 and from Tiange Interactive, the Hong Kong-listed live platform company 1980.HK. In October 2016 Huajiao announced a financing round of 300 million renminbi, of which 100 million renminbi came from Shoujian Investment and 60 million renminbi from 360. In 2017 Tiange Interactive invested a further 100 million renminbi in the platform. The money funded host recruitment, celebrity programming and user acquisition during the most expensive phase of China's live-streaming wars, when platforms competed for anchors with signing fees and for viewers with subsidies.

By the end of that contest Huajiao had survived the industry reshuffle that began in the second half of 2016. Many once-popular platforms, Panda TV among them, closed, and resources flowed to a first tier of head platforms, a group Huafang's own history states included Huajiao.

Product and content

Huajiao provided a stage, in Huafang's listing description, for people to show their talents and share skills, experience and lifestyle through an interactive entertainment experience. In practice that meant entertainment showrooms in the Chinese live tradition: singing, performance, chat and games, hosted by professional and grassroots anchors, with viewers interacting through comments and paid virtual gifts. Revenue came overwhelmingly from those live interactions. Huafang reported that live broadcasting supplied more than 97 percent of group revenue in the period before listing.

Huajiao's own revenue figures in the group's prospectus show a growing business even as rivals fell away: 1.976 billion renminbi in 2018, 2.166 billion in 2019, 2.826 billion in 2020 and 2.230 billion in the eight months to 31 August 2021 alone, the last figure up 23.61 percent on the same period of 2020. Average monthly active users were reported at 41 million in 2018, 23.6 million in 2019, 27.2 million in 2020 and 29.5 million in the first eight months of 2021, showing both the post-boom correction and a later recovery.

Scale of users and streamers

The clearest audited picture of Huajiao's scale comes from Huafang's Hong Kong filings. As of 31 August 2021 Huajiao had 207.1 million cumulative registered users and about 10.1 million registered streamers, of whom more than 200,000 were average monthly active streamers in the eight months to that date. Some translated summaries render the streamer figure as 101 million, but the group's own English prospectus summary and the consistent Chinese reporting give about 10.1 million registered anchors, which is the figure used here.

At group level, Huafang cited iResearch data ranking it first among China's online entertainment live-streaming platforms by cumulative downloads over the track record period, and second by monthly active users and usage time from January to August 2021, while ranking third by revenue for the six months to 30 June 2021. Huajiao, as the mobile flagship, supplied the largest share of that position, complemented on desktop by Six Rooms.

Merger with Six Rooms in 2019

On 29 April 2019 the Huajiao-Six Rooms merger was completed. The restructuring agreement had been entered into in June 2018 between Huafang Technology, Mijing Hefeng, its then shareholders including Qihoo 360, and Songcheng Performance. Huafang Technology issued 60 percent of its shares to Mijing Hefeng's shareholders in return for the entire equity of Mijing Hefeng, combining Huajiao's mobile business with the Six Rooms desktop platform inside one group. Contemporary valuation reporting put Six Rooms at 3.4 billion renminbi and Huajiao at 5.1 billion renminbi in the transaction, for a combined Huafang valuation of 8.5 billion renminbi, with Huajiao shareholders holding 60 percent of the restructured entity and Songcheng Performance and strategic shareholders 40 percent.

The logic was complementary: one platform rooted in the PC era, the other built for mobile internet, together covering both screens, both anchor communities and both audiences. After the merger Zhou Hongyi held 38.21 percent through 360-related entities and served as Huafang's chairman and largest shareholder, Songcheng Performance held 37.06 percent as second shareholder, and Yu Dan served as executive director and later chief executive of the group.

Life inside Huafang Group

Inside Huafang, Huajiao operated through Mijing Hefeng while Six Rooms operated through Huafang Technology. The group added a third leg in 2020 by acquiring the overseas HOLLA Group, whose video social products served North America, Europe, the Far East and the Middle East and North Africa, though overseas revenue remained small at about 2.6 percent of the total in pre-listing reporting. A 2020 experiment in virtual live broadcasting, through the acquisition of Houla Technology, was suspended when the virtual-star market developed more slowly than expected, producing an impairment loss of 65.5 million renminbi.

Group revenue grew from 1.993 billion renminbi in 2018 to 2.831 billion in 2019, 3.684 billion in 2020 and 4.6 billion in 2021, with gross margins improving from 15.1 percent to about 27.7 percent by the first eight months of 2021. The group reported 391 million registered users by 31 December 2021 in later filing summaries, and average monthly active users of 59.9 million across its platforms in the first eight months of 2021. Huajiao's paying-user retention was reported at 78.8 percent for that period, ahead of Six Rooms at 66.1 percent, underlining the mobile product's commercial strength within the group.

Hong Kong listing and delisting of the parent

Huafang first submitted a Hong Kong listing prospectus on 25 October 2021, with CCB International and Haitong International as joint sponsors; that application lapsed after six months and was resubmitted in April 2022. The group listed successfully on 12 December 2022 as 3611.HK, offering 46 million shares and raising approximately 128.8 million Hong Kong dollars, according to counsel reporting on the offering. Shares rose as much as 28.57 percent intraday on debut and closed at 3.34 Hong Kong dollars, for a market capitalisation of about 3.34 billion Hong Kong dollars.

The listed life was short. In December 2024 the Hong Kong exchange announced that Huafang Group's shares would be delisted on 16 December 2024 after the company failed to meet resumption guidance requirements, following a trading suspension. The delisting ended Huafang's period as a public company; it did not by itself record the closure of Huajiao, which is therefore described here as the flagship product of a group whose corporate history includes listing and delisting, rather than as a platform that shut down on that date.

Beijing base and industry position

Huajiao is catalogued with Beijing, where Mijing Hefeng was based and where Huafang maintained its principal place of business in Chaoyang District. Beijing was the centre of China's live-streaming industry, home also to Inke, Yizhibo and Six Rooms, and Huajiao's trajectory was shaped by that cluster: shared anchor labour markets, shared regulators and direct competition for the same young entertainment audience. Its fines-and-reshuffle era, celebrity launch strategy and merger path are representative of how Beijing's mobile live platforms matured from venture-funded challengers into consolidated groups.

Significance

Huajiao matters for three reasons. First, scale: more than 207 million registered users and 10 million registered streamers by August 2021 made it one of the largest entertainment live platforms ever built in China. Second, survival: launched in the most crowded year of the live boom, it outlasted better-publicised rivals such as Panda Live and grew revenue through 2020 and 2021. Third, structure: its 2019 merger with Six Rooms joined the mobile and desktop generations of Chinese live entertainment in a single company, and Huafang's detailed Hong Kong filings preserve an unusually complete public record of Huajiao's users, revenue and economics. Together those filings make Huajiao one of the best-documented platforms of China's live-streaming era.