About KrAsia

KrAsia

KrAsia is an English-language digital technology-news publication founded in 2017 and headquartered in Singapore. It was created as the English-language arm of 36Kr, one of China's leading Chinese-language technology media platforms, with the simple founding idea, in its own company profiles, of bringing quality news about China's tech scene out to a global audience. Its stated mission is to report on the companies, people and trends driving China's innovation economy, and to offer the world a clearer, more nuanced understanding of the country's fast-evolving businesses and market opportunities. Although this directory lists it under Beijing — the rollout's nominal city for foreign-based, China-focused outlets, and the home city of its parent — KrAsia's actual base is Singapore, from where it works alongside 36Kr Global sister teams in Beijing and Tokyo to support technology and innovation happening across borders.

Origins as the English-language arm of 36Kr

KrAsia's parent, 36Kr, was founded in Beijing in 2010 and grew into what its own history describes as China's most influential business and technology network, delivering content focused on China's innovation and new-economy trends since that year. By the time of its overseas expansion, 36Kr said it had published more than 100,000 articles on China's startup and venture capital scene and reached more than 150 million readers worldwide. In 2017, 36Kr began building overseas operations, and KrAsia, launched in Singapore, was its first subsidiary abroad. The logic was straightforward: China's technology companies, investors and regulators were shaping markets far beyond China, yet much of the detailed reporting on them existed only in Chinese. An English-language newsroom, drawing on 36Kr's reporting network and database in China, could translate not just language but context — explaining why a funding round, a regulatory decision or a product launch in Beijing, Shenzhen or Hangzhou mattered to readers in Singapore, Southeast Asia, North America and beyond.

That origin still shapes the publication's identity. KrAsia presents itself both as a standalone English-language news outlet and as part of the wider 36Kr Global structure. In October 2019, 36Kr announced the formation of 36Kr Global Holdings, its Hong Kong-based overseas group company, to consolidate resources across Asia — in China, Southeast Asian nations, India and Japan — and build a cross-border startup service platform. By then, 36Kr said, KrAsia had produced over 3,000 pieces of English-language coverage that had generated more than 10 million page views, and its coverage of China had gained a large following in Southeast Asia and North America. The same expansion produced 36Kr Japan in Tokyo in 2018 and a presence in Bangalore, India, in 2019.

What KrAsia covers

KrAsia covers startups, venture investment, big technology companies, electric vehicles, e-commerce, artificial intelligence and regulatory trends, with a particular focus on China and a widening lens across Asia-Pacific. Its homepage, under the tagline “Decoding China's tech and business pulse,” organises coverage into sections that reflect that breadth: Big Tech, Automotives, Retail and Commerce, Market News, Listings and IPOs, Earnings Reports, an APAC Spotlight, a MENA Watch tracking Middle East business links with China, and a Venture Roundup of fundraising activity. Recent coverage visible on the site ranges from ByteDance consolidating its AI applications and Xiaomi's research and development plans, to BYD's overseas charging partnerships, Li Auto's battery and charging strategy, Chinese convenience stores losing customers to instant-delivery apps, and long-form insights such as a mapping of Shenzhen's hardware belt and an examination of how Pinduoduo can offer free shipping on very small orders and still make money.

Two strands run consistently through that output. The first is deal and company news: funding rounds, listings, earnings and executive moves, often summarised in its “Deals in brief” format bringing together fundraising activities across Asia-Pacific. The second is explanatory and analytical reporting — pieces that take a company, sector or policy shift and explain the competitive and regulatory forces behind it, from China's electric-vehicle price war and autonomous-driving race to the structural roadblocks facing Southeast Asian startups after the pandemic-era funding boom cooled. For readers who follow China professionally, that combination of fast news and longer insight is the core of the offer.

The KrASIA Daily briefing and formats

From its early years, KrAsia published the Kr-ASIA Daily — described in its own early editions as a five-minute read briefing readers on everything they needed to know to start the day, selecting the latest technology and startup news worth their time with a focus on Southeast Asia and China. Early Daily editions mixed regional round-ups — Singapore's electric car-sharing programme, Temasek-backed investments, regional accelerator launches — with China items such as 36Kr's own 300-million-yuan investment round and the Neo Business Conference in Beijing. The format established a habit that persists in the publication's current mix: short news items for speed, features for depth, Q&A interviews with investors and founders, and insights pieces that draw on 36Kr's extensive traffic, network and data capabilities in China. The 36Kr English byline operation on KrAsia continues to publish translated and adapted reporting from the Chinese parent, making Chinese-language new-economy journalism accessible to English readers who would otherwise miss it entirely.

The Nikkei partnership and syndication

A defining step in KrAsia's reach came through its parent's partnership with Nikkei. In May 2019, 36Kr and Nikkei became global strategic partners to foster technology innovation and exchange and to help Chinese companies expand overseas. Under the arrangement, reported by Marketing Interactive, 36Kr's English content, produced through its subsidiary KrAsia, would appear on the Nikkei Asia Review — now Nikkei Asia — as well as on scoutAsia, the corporate data service launched as a joint venture between Nikkei and the Financial Times. Nikkei would also publish articles about Chinese startups from the Japanese version of 36Kr on its electronic edition and its Nikkei Telecom business database. For KrAsia, syndication through Nikkei placed its Chinese-startup reporting in front of one of Asia's most established business-news audiences and signalled that its English coverage of China was treated as a primary source by a major regional publisher, not merely as translation filler. The partnership also fitted 36Kr's stated aim of strengthening tech reporting on Chinese and other Asian technology companies across the region.

China coverage in depth

China remains the centre of gravity. KrAsia's China coverage tracks the country's largest technology firms — including ByteDance, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Pinduoduo and the major electric-vehicle makers such as BYD, Li Auto, Nio and XPeng — alongside the regulators and policies that periodically reshape their prospects. Its automotive and mobility verticals follow the EV transition in granular detail: battery technology from suppliers such as CATL, autonomous-driving programmes, robotaxi expansion, charging networks, and the intense price competition that has squeezed margins across the industry. Its retail and commerce coverage follows platform competition, instant delivery, and consumer brands adapting to more thrifty shoppers, while its market coverage follows Hong Kong and mainland listings, earnings and the flow of venture capital into and out of China. Because the reporting draws on 36Kr's Beijing-rooted network, it frequently surfaces companies, founders and local dynamics — a Hefei startup supplying a rocket fairing, a Shenzhen hardware supply chain, a Guangdong business owner comparing a Tesla with a Xiaomi SU7 — that English-language wire coverage tends to overlook.

A wider Asia-Pacific lens

Although it began as a window on China, KrAsia describes itself in current company profiles as a digital media company reporting on the most promising technology-driven trends and businesses in Asia-Pacific, covering news from the tech and startup ecosystems across Asia. Its Southeast Asia coverage examines fundraising, e-commerce competition — including TikTok Shop's gains in markets such as Vietnam — digital banks, and the region's venture capital landscape, while its APAC Spotlight and East Asia pages extend to Japan, South Korea and India. Its MENA Watch reflects a newer axis: the growing business, investment and technology links between China and the Middle East, including Dubai-China forums and AI cooperation. This regional breadth matters to its China mission rather than diluting it, because Chinese technology companies now compete, invest and list across all of these markets, and their stories cannot be told from Beijing alone.

Audience and who it serves

KrAsia's audience, by design, is international and professional: investors assessing Chinese and Asian startups, founders and executives benchmarking competitors, corporate readers tracking supply chains and consumer markets, and journalists and analysts who need English-language reporting grounded in Chinese-language sources. Its LinkedIn company profile lists it as a privately held media company of 11–50 employees headquartered in Singapore, with specialties in media, editorials, events, programs, innovation, startups and technology. That events and programs element reflects the wider 36Kr model, in which media sits alongside data, conferences and cross-border services for startups. For general readers, the value is different but related: KrAsia offers a sustained, day-by-day English record of how China's innovation economy actually changes — company by company, deal by deal and policy by policy — rather than coverage that arrives only when China technology becomes a geopolitical headline.

How it works with 36Kr Global

Operationally, KrAsia works with its 36Kr Global sister teams in Beijing and Tokyo, in its own words, to support tech and innovation happening across borders. The Beijing connection gives it proximity to the parent company's reporting on China's new economy, its database and its analytics capabilities, which 36Kr promotes as a comprehensive database providing insights into China's technology landscape. The Tokyo connection, through 36Kr Japan, links it to Japanese-language coverage of China's new-economy sector, described by 36Kr as one of the most notable Japanese-language news sites covering that sector. Together, the structure is intended to bridge startup information gaps between Chinese enterprises and partners in Southeast Asia, Japan, India and further afield, facilitating cross-border communication, cooperation and investment. KrAsia is the English-language face of that bridge.

Place in English-language China tech reporting

KrAsia occupies a distinctive place among English-language outlets on China. It is neither a foreign newspaper's China bureau nor an independent blog: it is the international edition, in effect, of a major Chinese technology-media group, published from Singapore for global readers. That position gives it unusual access to Chinese startup and investor circles and to the parent company's volume of Chinese reporting, while its Singapore headquarters and English editorial format place it in the regional business-media conversation alongside Nikkei Asia and other Asia-Pacific titles. Its syndication by Nikkei Asia Review and scoutAsia, its thousands of English articles and its following in Southeast Asia and North America, as reported by 36Kr, mark the scale it reached within its first two years. Nearly a decade after its 2017 founding, it remains active with daily news, features, insights and venture coverage, continuing the founding proposition that quality news about China's tech scene deserves — and can sustain — a global English-language audience.

Access and official website

KrAsia publishes openly online at kr-asia.com, where readers can browse its China, Southeast Asia, East Asia and industry verticals, including transportation, mobility and autonomous vehicles, search its archive of news, features, insights and Q&As, and contact its 36Kr English desk. Its coverage is updated daily, and its articles continue to be the English-language record through which much of 36Kr's reporting on China's companies, people and innovation trends reaches the world.