Kuaishou

Kuaishou () is a Chinese video-sharing mobile app developed by Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., Ltd, with a particularly strong user base among users outside of China's Tier 1 cities. Outside Mainland China, it has also gained considerable popularity in other markets, topping the Google Play and Apple App Store's "Most Downloaded" lists in eight countries. In India, this app was known as Snack Video. It is often referred to as "Kwai" in overseas markets. Its main competitor is Douyin, which is known as TikTok outside of China.
Kuaishou was founded by Su Hua (宿华) and Cheng Yixiao (程一笑). Prior to co-founding Kuaishou, Su Hua had worked for both Google and Baidu as a software engineer. The company is headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing.
Kuaishou is a short video social platform for all users to record and share their lives, with the core mission to "Capture the World, Share Your Story". Kuaishou topped Google Play and Apple App Store’s Most Downloaded lists in eight countries in 2020. The average MAU worldwide reached 776 million in the first half of last year. Active users on the platform spent an average of more than 85 minutes daily on its main app.
History.
Kuaishou is the earliest short video platform of China. Kuaishou's predecessor, "GIF Kuaishou", was founded in March 2011. GIF Kuaishou was a mobile app created to make and share GIF pictures. In November 2012, Kuaishou transformed into a short video community, and a platform for users to record and share videos depicting their everyday lives. By 2013, the app had already reached 100 million daily users. By 2019, that figure had surpassed 200 million active daily users.
In March 2017, Kuaishou closed a US$350 million investment round led by Tencent. In January 2018, Forbes estimated the company's valuation to be US$18 billion.
In 2019, the company announced a partnership with the "People's Daily", an official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, to help it experiment with artificial intelligence in news.
In March 2020, Kuaishou purchased the online video platform AcFun. 
In June 2020, the Government of India banned Kwai along with 58 other apps, citing "data and privacy issues". Recent border tensions between India and China might have also played a role in the ban, as there has been an increasingly political "Boycott China" movement in India due to the competitive relations between the two countries in recent years.
In January 2021, Kuaishou announced it was planning an initial public offering that would seek to raise approximately US$5 billion. Kuaishou's stock completed its first day of trading at $300 HKD ($38.70 USD), surpassing its initial offer price by more than double the amount, and causing its market value to skyrocket to over $1 trillion HKD ($159 billion USD).
In Feb 2021, Kuaishou’s shares began trading at HK$338 per share and rose by as much as 200 per cent to HK$345 versus its IPO price of HK$115. 
The stock closed at HK$300 on Friday, valuing the 10-year-old unprofitable company at HK$1.23 trillion (US$159 billion)
In Feb. 2021, shares of Chinese short video app company Kuaishou jumped 194% at the open on its Hong Kong debut.
Popularity.
Compared to Douyin, Kuaishou is relatively more popular with an older public outside of tier 1 cities. Its initial popularity originated around videos of Chinese rural life. Kuaishou also relies more on e-commerce revenue than on advertising revenue compared to its main competitor.
Controversy.
In April 2018, the app was shortly banned from Chinese app stores after CCTV reported on the platform popularizing videos of teenage mothers.