doing business as
A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...
Youku (), is a
video hosting service
An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...
based in
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited.
Youku has its headquarters in the Sinosteel Plaza in
Haidian District, Beijing
Haidian District () is a district of the municipality of Beijing. It is mostly situated in northwestern Beijing, but also to a lesser extent in the west, where it has borders with Xicheng District and Fengtai District.
It is 431 square km in ar ...
.
On 12 March 2012, Youku reached an agreement to merger with
Tudou
Tudou, Inc. () is a Chinese video-sharing website headquartered in Shanghai, China, where users can upload, view and share video clips. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007 served over 55 million videos each day.monthly active users
Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...
, with 800 million daily video views.
Youku is one of China's top online video and streaming service platforms, along with iQiyi,
Sohu
Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other ser ...
,
LeTV
Le.com (), known legally as Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp., Beijing, is a Chinese technology company, and one of the largest online video companies in China. It is headquartered in Chaoyang District, Beijing.
Leshi Internet ...
,
Tencent Video
Tencent Video (, also called WeTV outside of China) is a Chinese video streaming website owned by Tencent. The website was launched in April 2011, and is one of China's largest online video platforms. As of March 2022, Tencent Video has over 1.2 ...
,
PPTV
PPTV () is a Chinese video streaming website. Its predecessor, PPLive, was peer-to-peer streaming video freeware created at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei Province. The group of companies that runs the websi ...
Funshion
Funshion is a Chinese peer-to-peer streaming video network software and website. Target users are on the Chinese mainland. The vast majority of content is from East Asia, mostly Mainland China, Japan, Korea.
Company
Funshion Online was found ...
. However, Youku's domination in the Chinese market was toppled by its competitor Baidu's iQiyi in 2015.
History
Youku was founded by
Victor Koo
Victor Koo Wing Cheung or Gu Yongqiang () served as President of Sohu, Inc., the second largest search engine in China.
He became the co-founder and CEO of Youku in 2006, which has been called the "YouTube of China".
Youku merged with Tudou i ...
(Gu Yongqiang), former
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
of Chinese Internet portal
Sohu
Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other ser ...
. Initial funding for the site came from 1Verge, a fund raised by him. A beta version of the site was launched with limited geographic reach in June 2003, and the website was formally launched in December 2003. In 2007, the company received $25 million in funding from venture capitalists. In December 2009, the company announced that it had raised a total of $110 million in private equity funding. Major investors include Brookside (Bain) Capital,
Sutter Hill Ventures
Sutter Hill Ventures is an American private equity firm focused on venture capital investments in technology-based start-up companies. Founded in 1964, Sutter Hill is one of the oldest venture capital firms still in operation. Based in Palo Alto ...
,
Maverick Capital
Maverick Capital is an American hedge fund firm. It was founded by Lee Ainslie in 1993, who was a " Tiger Cub" under Julian Robertson at Tiger Management, helped raise $38 million in capital by the family of Texas entrepreneur Sam Wyly
Samuel ...
, and Chengwei Ventures.
The company initially emphasized user-generated content but has since shifted its focus to professionally produced videos licensed from over 1,500 content partners.
As of January 2010, Youku.com was ranked #1 in the Chinese Internet video sector according to Internet metrics provider CR-Nielsen, (keeping in mind that YouTube is banned in China). In 2008, Youku partnered with Myspace in China. Later that year, Youku became the sole online video provider embedded in the China Edition of
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...
.
In January 2010, Youku and competitor
Tudou
Tudou, Inc. () is a Chinese video-sharing website headquartered in Shanghai, China, where users can upload, view and share video clips. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007 served over 55 million videos each day.New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
for its first time. The stock closed at $33.44 on its first day of trading giving the company a market capitalization of approximately $3.3 billion. For the first 9 months of 2010 Youku reported revenue of $35.1 million and recorded a loss of $25 million during this period. YouKu.com seems to have no relation to the Chinese domain youku.cn.
Victor Koo was once an employee of Bain & Company, one of the most prominent management consulting firms in the world.
In December 2018, the company announced a layoff of the president of the unit Yang Weidong due to his assistance to the police in investigation about the case of seeking economic benefits.
The mobile app of Youku was banned in India (along with other Chinese apps) on 2 September 2020 by the government, the move came amid the 2020 China-India skirmish.
Merger
On 12 March 2012, Youku and
Tudou
Tudou, Inc. () is a Chinese video-sharing website headquartered in Shanghai, China, where users can upload, view and share video clips. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007 served over 55 million videos each day. creating one of
China's
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
biggest video sites. Prior to the announcement of the merger, Youku was the #11 website in China, and Tudou was #14. The company's name was changed to Youku Tudou Inc. The chairman of the board is
Victor Koo
Victor Koo Wing Cheung or Gu Yongqiang () served as President of Sohu, Inc., the second largest search engine in China.
He became the co-founder and CEO of Youku in 2006, which has been called the "YouTube of China".
Youku merged with Tudou i ...
, the founder of Youku. The company had a stock listed on the NYSE, YOKU before being acquired by Alibaba Group on 6 November 2015. In December 2016 it reported it had 30 million subscribers.
Tencent Video
Tencent Video (, also called WeTV outside of China) is a Chinese video streaming website owned by Tencent. The website was launched in April 2011, and is one of China's largest online video platforms. As of March 2022, Tencent Video has over 1.2 ...
*
Tudou
Tudou, Inc. () is a Chinese video-sharing website headquartered in Shanghai, China, where users can upload, view and share video clips. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007 served over 55 million videos each day.iQiyi
Business Week
''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...