Huanwang Technology: Cross-border, smart large-screen investment enters the third stage

Since 2020, the smart large-screen industry has achieved rapid development. According to public market data, there are currently 126 million active smart TV terminals in China, with a daily active rate of 48% and an average daily usage time of 6.3 hours.

In sharp contrast to the activeness of smart large screens in the user market is their indifference in the capital market. In the past year, keen and avant-garde investment institutions have rarely made large investments in this market.

However, this situation changed this year.

In March this year, Huanwang Technology, a well-known domestic professional smart large-screen operation and marketing service provider, officially announced its C round of financing, introducing eight investment institutions including CMC Capital, E-Dun Fund, Haobai Holdings, and Lianxin Capital. Two months later, on May 25, Huanwang Technology announced again that it had completed its C+ round of financing, which was exclusively invested by the state-owned investment platform Shanghai Information Investment Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Shanghai Information Investment").

Under the background that capital is still taking a wait-and-see attitude towards the smart large-screen industry, Huan Technology has not only obtained hundreds of millions of yuan in financing, but also won the favor of well-known investment institutions and state-owned investment platforms. Why can Huan Technology gain the trust of investment institutions? What does Huan Technology think about the development of the large-screen industry? We interviewed Mr. Wu Shenggang, CEO of Huan Technology.

Smart large screen investment enters the third stage

Huanwang Technology's C+ round of financing will not only greatly benefit Huanwang's own development, but more importantly, it will promote greater industry recognition of the entire smart large-screen industry.

From the three major historical stages of the development of the smart large-screen industry, we can see that Huanwang has been constantly trying and breaking through in exploring the boundaries of the industry.

In the early stages of the industry , most of the companies that entered the smart large screen industry were home appliance companies. Because of the high degree of relevance of their businesses, they chose to invest in and establish related companies to operate smart large screens. Huanwang Technology, founded in 2010, is a typical example. During this stage, the investment purpose of home appliance companies was generally due to the needs of their own business development. They took smart large screens as a new growth pole and made industrial layout their primary demand. Obviously, Huanwang, which started at the same time as the industry, seized this rare opportunity and accumulated strength for future development.

In 2015, the smart large-screen industry entered the stage of Internet capital enclosure . At this time, the main force of industry investment turned into Internet companies represented by Tencent, iQiyi and Youku. The market competition changed from the battle for positioning to the battle for terminal entrance.

In 2016, Huanwang Technology received a B round of financing led by Tencent. By effectively opening up and introducing the mobile Internet business model, the monetization capabilities of its vertical businesses have been reborn, directly promoting the steady development of the smart large-screen industry.

In the above two stages, leading enterprises represented by Huanwang Technology have achieved rapid development. More importantly, these two stages coincided with the explosive growth of mobile Internet. As a result, the smart large-screen industry has regained its foothold in traffic. Even after the mobile Internet traffic peaked, it can still rely on its unique positioning to feed back to the mobile Internet and keep pace with it. According to Miaozhen System's research report, from 2018 to date, the total amount of New TV advertising has increased by 12% in Internet advertising. Smart large screens have gradually become a new battlefield in the field of digital marketing.

At the same time, new changes have also taken place in the smart screen itself.

In recent years, the name of the smart large-screen industry has gradually changed from "smart TV" to "smart large screen". In the eyes of Huanwang Technology, this change in the name reflects the change in the role played by television.

In the past, when people mentioned TV, they often only thought of "watching TV", or more precisely, "watching TV stations". But when it comes to smart large screens, they are often associated with functions such as playing games, video on demand, and smart home hubs. The functions of smart large screens have expanded from simple viewing to all aspects of life, including food, clothing, housing, and transportation, which means that its vitality and usage space have achieved geometric growth.

During this transformation, Huanwang Technology is committed to integration and innovation. Until 2018, the three major channels of smart TV, cable TV and IPTV were clearly separated in the living room. Although they did not interfere with each other, they also made users confused. To give the simplest example, a family bought a smart TV and connected to IPTV, but if they want to watch the internal resources of the smart TV system, they have to enter the system homepage, and if they want to watch IPTV services, they have to switch the signal source. So can this step be more concise? Furthermore, can these two terminals be combined into one?

Huan Technology was one of the first companies to realize that there were commonalities between these three businesses. In particular, the joint development of the three channels and the convergence of traffic have led to the overall growth of the smart large-screen industry. Therefore, Huan has simultaneously launched businesses in three different fields: smart TV, IPTV operators, and broadcasting operators, providing users with smart services in multiple fields. The concept of "smart large screen" came into being and became a special term that summarizes multiple businesses.

After that, Huanwang Technology's smart TV and IPTV businesses began to merge. IPTV had a direct entrance to smart TVs, and its more mature paying user market fed back to smart TVs. From this moment on, the concept of "smart large screen" began to take root, bringing about the integration of various large-screen business product forms and operating experience, as well as the learning and complementation of various businesses.

As time went by, when these factors produced a chemical reaction due to symbiosis, the smart large-screen industry began to explode and entered the third stage of development, that is, the stage of capital entry from multiple fields .

The thinking of investors in this stage is different from that of investors in the previous two stages: they hope to see the rapid development of the invested enterprises and the entire smart large-screen track . When the investment target has become a leader in the industry track, the capital hopes to play the leading role of the leader, enhance the competitiveness of the entire track, and thus obtain industry-level channel advantages.

Huanwang Technology's C round of financing fully reflects this point. The nine investors are from media, operators and state-owned functional investment platforms. It can be clearly seen that compared with the previous two stages, the capital entering this stage is more diversified, and the relevance of business scope and smart large screen is not as strong as that of home appliances and Internet companies. This means that the smart large screen industry has attracted the attention of capital from more fields, and will be intertwined and integrated with more fields, giving birth to more possibilities.

Therefore, this round of financing is of great significance not only to Huanwang Technology, but also to the entire smart large-screen industry. This is a large-scale trial of capital in the smart large-screen industry. In other words, this is also an opportunity for the smart large-screen industry to regain capital recognition. When capital has more confidence in the smart large-screen industry, more investors will naturally enter the market, and the boundaries of the industry will be continuously expanded. Huanwang Technology will naturally explore new opportunities in this process, thereby driving further development of itself and the entire industry.

The integration of TV and Internet will be the main theme of the development of smart large screens

How will the domestic smart large-screen industry develop after more capital enters the market? We can learn from other people’s experience and perhaps we can get some inspiration from the development history of related industries overseas.

Roku is a well-known American video streaming platform. Its network set-top boxes are equipped with a variety of streaming media content, including Netflix, for users to watch on TV. However, the profit from simply selling set-top boxes is very limited, so Roku changed its strategy and focused on building the platform, increasing software revenue such as subscriptions and advertising through massive video content and high-quality advertising services, and viewing set-top boxes more as a means to acquire active users.

In March this year, Roku reached a cooperation agreement with market research company Nielsen and acquired the latter's advertising technology department. This transaction will allow Roku to obtain Nielsen's automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion technology (DAI). Through the combination of these two technologies, Roku can allow advertisers to replace traditional TV "broadcast" live streaming ads with personalized live streaming ads in real time, promoting the integrated development of traditional TV and smart TV advertising.

After the deal is completed, Roku can expand its advertising business from on-demand advertising to linear TV live streaming advertising. In addition, Nielsen has advertising business cooperation with major TV media companies, so Roku also plans to start new dialogues with media companies to penetrate into a wider market.

It is not difficult to see several development trends of smart large screens from Roku's experience: software business will occupy a core position, hardware will play a more entry role, the advertising business of traditional TVs and smart TVs will gradually be opened up, and smart large screen operators and media will gradually merge.

This trend is also clearly demonstrated in Huanwang Technology.

From the hardware perspective, China's huge user base of smart large-screen TVs is a natural traffic portal. In 2021, the number of domestic smart TV users exceeded 250 million, the number of IPTV users exceeded 326 million, and the number of cable TV users exceeded 200 million. Competition is particularly fierce in the field of smart TVs, and major manufacturers have accelerated iterations to bring more video resources and even short video content to the TV side. Among them, Huanwang Technology covers more than 100 million smart TV terminals, 200 million IPTVs, and 50 million cable TVs. With such a large number of portals, Huanwang Technology has the highest advertising share in the industry.

Huanwang Technology is also at the forefront of China in the integration of smart TV and traditional TV business. In 2016, Huanwang Technology began to get involved in TV station business. However, at that time, TV stations faced the impact of online media. In addition to the dispersion of traffic, advertisers also began to tighten their budgets accordingly. Therefore, Huanwang Technology chose to get involved in this field at such a time, more based on strategic layout considerations rather than short-term revenue purposes.

Huanwang Technology combined the experience of foreign counterparts and found that the commercial monetization systems of smart TVs and TV stations actually have a high degree of overlap. Therefore, if you want to make achievements in the development of smart large-screen business, you need to have a deep understanding of both smart TV and TV station operating systems.

To this end, Huan Technology and TV stations have launched in-depth cooperation in various forms, including user analysis, ratings optimization, joint marketing, and investment assistance. In the process of cooperation, Huan Technology has not only helped the TV stations grow, but also expanded its own business scale. For example, on the smart TV side, Huan Technology has established the Huanshi Hall business and set up multiple TV station zones. Through the diversion of multiple channels, it aggregates target users and intelligently recommends programs to users, thereby helping advertisers to achieve accurate and in-depth exposure.

Finally, it is the implantation of media genes. Many investors in Huanwang Technology's C round of financing are from the media field. The strategic resources they bring make Huanwang Technology's next stage of development focus naturally tilted towards smart media business, objectively promoting the deep integration of the media industry chain and the smart large-screen industry chain.

In fact, as a leader in the domestic smart large-screen industry, Huanwang Technology is constantly integrating and expanding its development ideas, pointing out the direction for the industry and exploring more feasibility for the future of large screens.

The most worthwhile investment in Huanwang Technology is its team

It can be said that the capital entering the smart large-screen industry is an inevitable trend, and the growth of the Huanwang team can be summarized as: the right team is doing the right thing in a fast-growing track. "Professional people are responsible for professional things" is a universal rule for all walks of life, but Huanwang Technology implements it more thoroughly.

Huan Technology's smart TV, operator and other business teams have more than ten years of work experience in their respective fields and have excellent professional capabilities. Therefore, Huan Technology's business direction and strategy are basically determined by the team, and many resource requirements are proposed by the front-line team and the company tries to meet them. This makes Huan Technology different from traditional "top-down driven" companies and forms an organizational structure of "the front line commands the back end." As Huawei Chairman Ren Zhengfei said, "Let the front-line team that can hear the gunfire make decisions."

Such an efficient organizational structure enables Huanwang Technology to always look forward and form a good atmosphere of unity, pragmatism, and disregard for personal gains and losses, which has left a deep impression on investors. This also makes CMC Capital, E-Dun Fund, Haobai Holdings, Lianxin Capital and other investors believe that investing in Huanwang Technology is investing in this professional team. It is precisely because of the professional team, reasonable organizational structure and long-term strategic determination that Huanwang Technology has completed the triple jump in capital operation.

Huan Technology is constantly looking for new sources of growth in the fields of smart TVs and TV stations, while exploring new breakthroughs in the industry. Although there is no guarantee that these practices will lead to immediate performance improvements, in the long run, they are in line with the company's long-term interests and values. In fact, Huan Technology's experience in the field of TV station media is also the core factor that impressed media investors such as CMC Capital and E-Dun Fund.

Finally, and most importantly, the rapid expansion of the smart large-screen track. This does not only refer to the growth in the number of terminals - Wu Shenggang believes that the opportunities of smart TVs themselves are limited, but the changes brought about by their popularization to the media industry chain will be unlimited. In the process of continuous integration and development and the boundaries of the image industry, smart large screens will surely obtain more industry certification from capital.

Huan Technology believes that the "smart large-screen track" is not just about advertising on smart TV terminals, but a broad market for the entire media industry after the popularization of smart terminals. This broader vision also allows Huan Technology to find more growth points, thereby stimulating its own potential.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.