Meet Viya, China’s billionaire retail 'queen of live-streaming'

WHO IS VIYA? She’s China’s star saleswoman. A billionaire at 34, Viya — real name: Huang Wei — reigns over live online shopping in the mainland. Viya's explosive success has brought her not only massive personal wealth, but social prominence. With a net worth reported by the Chinese media at $1.25 billion, she ranks among China's wealthiest 500 individuals.

FACE OF E-COMMERCE LIVE-STREAMING: Viya is the face of a new phenonmenon in China, known as "e-commerce livestreaming". The industry is relatively new, and is spreading throughout Asia, Latin America and the rest of the world. Viya's power comes from one fact: she can sell anything. 

‘LIVE-STREAMING SALES QUEEN’: Viya is the queen of China’s $63 billion ecosystem — 6 times the size of US box office revenue — of live online shopping. The phenomenon started only in 2016, and she jumped right in. By 2018, reportedly earned estimated 30 million yuan. In China today, tens of millions of internet users who shop through live streaming. Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, is at the center of it all. Alibaba has established or acquired businesses throughout Asia, including Lazada, TMall, Youku Todou, Intime Department Store, Sun Art Retail Group.

PART-INFOMERCIAL, PART-VARIETY SHOW, PART-SOCIAL CHAT: The live, online shopping extravaganza Viya hosts most nights for her fans across China is part-variety show, part-infomercial, part-group chat, with a payment portal. Viya and Li Jia Qi, another leading livestreamer, sold a reported $400 million worth of goods in just one day on Taobao. Alibaba operates Taobao, China's mega e-commerce and entertainment marketplace equivalent to Facebook, Saturday Night Live and Paypal rolled into one. There are about 360 companies that today use Alibaba Cloud, mostly in the computer software industry.

MILLIONS WORTH OF ORDERS: Each night, Viya’s (age: 34) audience places orders worth millions of dollars — typically for cosmetics, appliances, prepared foods or clothing. She’s also sold houses and cars. As an online influencer, her popularity is shown by the numbers: she now has more than 80.90 million followers on Taobao livestream platform. TMall (formerly Taobao Mall) is the most-visited B2C online retail platform in China, and currently has over 40,000 merchants selling goods.

HOW DOES IT WORK? China has, undeniably, the largest online retail market in the world, estimated at $1.5 trillion in 2019, and growing 20% each year. Innovation in cloud-based computing and 5G have fuelled the industry's growth. What's unique about livestreaming e-commerce? Say, a liverstreamer is selling a coat, and puts it on in front of a livestream camera. A customer gets to see how a coat fits into a real person; you can also ask questions and get a response in real time. If you want to know more about the product, just click the link to get details and make the purchase — while the livestreaming goes on.

VIYA SOLD A ROCKET LAUNCH SERVICE FO $5.6-MILLION: In April 2020, Viya sold a rocket launch in a livestream on Taobao at a “discounted price” of 40 million yuan ($5.6 million). The launch service is offered by ExPace, part of China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp. Ltd (CASIC), which specialises in sending Kuaizhou (“speedy vessel”) series carrier rockets into space. CASIC is China’s first commercial rocket launch firm. ExPace is able to launch satellites using mobile launch platform.

3 BILLION YUAN IN SALES: On Singles Day (2019), China’s biggest shopping event of the year, Viya did more than 3 billion yuan in sales. The spread of coronavirus, which put most Chinese people under stay-at-home orders, doubled her viewership. Parts of Taobao, the Alibaba-operated online marketplace, can be read in English using Google Chrome.

E-COMMERCE LIVESTREAMING NOW WORTH BILLIONS: Live streaming is broadcasting video content in real-time. It's often used to share events, but it's starting to mature and diversify in China as live streaming is beginning to boom, enabled by video, social media, coupled with e-payments technology working as a sort of all-in-one platform.

INFLUENTIAL: In a world where people now shop almost exclusively online, Viya has become greatly influential, though but she has been criticized more than once by customers for "selling fake goods” and her company fined by Chinese authorities. Livestream shopping brings together several current tech trends—streaming, influencers, social, commerce—and offers companies a new path to consumers' hearts and wallets. Tesla, Procter & Gamble and supermodel-turned-beauty-entrepreneur Miranda Kerr, among others, have turned to Viya to introduce them to the Chinese market.

BASED IN HANGZHOU: Viya lives in Hangzhou, in East China's Zhejiang Province, a leading hub of digital economy in China. It’s also where she started her career and business. Hangzhou is known as the city of dreams, which offers countless possibilities. Viya is seen as a prime example of a Chinese influencer with substance and credibility. Her livestreams are a mix of variety shows, infomercials and casual chats with her viewers. In 2020, she sold $365 million in a single day.

KEY ENABLER: One of the ingredients pushing live-streaming e-commer is Alibaba’s technology— which allows the audience to watch a live stream, chat with other viewers, and select and pay for a product—all at the same time. It erases the gap between entertainment and buying, something that’s not fully developed in the west yet, due to the complex layers of payment processors and third-party portals. Taobao Live is Alibaba Group's livestream commerce channel. The platform has evolved live-streaming technology into the number one way of engaging consumers in China.

LIVE E-COMMERCE: “E-commerce livestreaming,” as it’s known among analysts, is extremely popular in China. The boom suggests livestream shopping can become a deeply embedded habit for consumers and an important tool for retailers. Viya is just the tip of the iceberg. Analysts say “live e-commerce” is also gaining ground elsewhere in Asia and Latin America.

IMMEDIATE PURCHASE: Livestream sales are increasingly becoming more common on Facebook, though payments are settled on some other platforms, like digital cash. The main ingredients: Influencers, smart phones, social media. But nowhere is the practice more pronounced than China. Taobao has elevated e-commerce to a form of entertainment.

FROM SUBCULTURE TO MAINSTREAM: Over the past 10 years, the number of people accessing the internet in China has increased five-fold. This huge spike has led to an explosion of online video hosting in China. Since 2016, livestreaming e-commerce has become a hallmark of Chinese tech innovation and generated countless billions of dollars. Live-streaming went from being a marginalised subculture to mainstream. By the end of this year, "social commerce” sales in China are projected to reach $363 billion in 2021, more than tripling 2018 spend, according to eMarketer, a New York-based market analytics firm.

DIGITISATION: In 2014, a staggering 433 million Chinese viewers had watched videos online. As of December 2020, however, this number had skyrocketed to 927 million viewers. Beijing has also pursued policies focused on modernising agriculture and digitising traditional manufacturing. This means internet celebrities, particularly those with dazzling sales records and social influence, have gone mainstream — and wield social influence.

NEW CONCEPT: Amazon’s been experimenting with the concept for more than a year, most recently teaming up with stars Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn for a spin-off and retail tie-in that will make the show’s winning designs immediately available to buy. Facebook has been trying to get users to shop on its platform for years; earlier this year, it announced a partnership with Shopify to help integrate buying there and on Instagram. 

INTEGRATED PAYMENTS TOOL: There are certain difference between the East-West retail culture. Unlike Amazon, Alibaba has integrated a video-streaming platform into its selling process. Livestreamers turn on broadcasts and sell their wares in shifts throughout the Singles' Day sales. During the streams, models interact with their viewers, demonstrating how makeup and skincare products work, trying on outfits, and answering questions posed to them via the live chat. 

KEEPING VIEWERS HOOKED: To keep viewers hooked throughout the 24-hour livestreams, Taobao Live has deals with crazy-low prices on limited quantities. How to save and pay? Viewers can “grab” cash vouchers that drop at unannounced times, and they get the chance to win prizes ranging from free items to an online store footing your entire shopping bill.

PENALTY: Viya’s influence and star appeal has come at a price. In June, Chinese media reported that a company related to Huang Wei (Viya) was fined 530,000 yuan ($82,921) for violating advertising law, sparking concerns over quality of products sold on e-commerce platforms. The company, Qianxun (Hangzhou) Culture Media Co., Ltd, was fined by the market supervisory authority of Binjiang district, in Hangzhou, on April 8 "for illegal promotion of food and cosmetics”, the English-language Global Times reported. According to data from Chinese corporate database Tianyancha, the company was established in September 2019 with Dong Haifeng, Huang's husband, as legal representative. The company is entirely owned by Qianxun (Hangzhou) Holding Co., Ltd, whose shares are indirectly held by Viya (Huang Wei).