China is about to go a bit loopy – Berlin’s gif creating and sharing platform Loopcam has revealed it will focus its efforts on the Chinese market, with founder Tor Rauden Källstigen suggesting it could even become their main audience in the near future.
The news comes after Loopcam’s successful Christmas update which saw a third of loops created in December enhanced with a Santa hat. Now the startup, which is backed by the likes of Alex Ljung, Christophe Maire, Felix Peterson and Zoe Adamvicz alongside Passion Capital, is aiming much higher, just in time for Chinese New Year.
The enormous and largely untapped Chinese market is undoubtedly attractive to many startups in Berlin – 88TC88 amongst them, of course – and companies like Loopcam are willing to face the many challenges to gain access to 1.3 billion potential customers. Tor told Silicon Allee that the push in China will consist of building Loopcam’s presence in local social media, localising and translating the entire Loopcam ecosystem and grow its Asian fan base.
In fact, the platform has already proved to be popular in the Far East, with strong user numbers in Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul. Yet it wasn’t easy to work with the Chinese authorities: “We haven’t had any close encounters,” Tor said, “but they’ve been making it very complicated to register unless you’re a local Chinese company.”
Having found a middleman, however, the company is now the proud owner of the www.loopcam.cn domain.
The launch in China is being timed to coincide with Chinese New Year on February 10 with users able to add a digital Cantonese hat to their loops as well as fireworks and red paper lanterns.
Tor added: “Quite apart from being a huge and expanding smart phone market in itself, China is also our stepping stone towards this entire part of the world. It could also potentially be our main audience within the near future.”
