Douban lays groundwork for overseas listing

A screenshot of douban.com, Aug 7, 2017.[Photo/douban.com]

Douban, an open social community platform in China, is preparing to list overseas by breaking up its different business lines, financial media outlet Caixin reported.

In a letter to his employees, released to Caixin, Douban's CEO Yang Bo, outlined plans to separate the budgets of each business line and manage cash flow to achieve that.

He explained that each business line will handle its own costs and output in the second half of the year and that the company will shut down those that underperform.

Douban is popular for accessing film, music and book reviews and boasts about 150 million registered users at the end of 2016. It's keen to increase the number of people using its app, while at the same time working on expanding into other channels like WeChat and Weibo to attract more potential users.

There's also its paid platform Douban Time for prime content sharing, and retail arm Douban Fair.

These sections will experience primary changes to further clarify their goals and untangle decision-making processes from other divisions, the letter noted.

Other sections such as brand advertising and hardcopy publications will have their own budgets, which will make up a large commercial team with advertising in other areas and commercial technology, he added.

All business lines will have to take care of their own market promotions.

Launched in 2005, Douban was a utopia for many Chinese intellectuals in the PC times. It completed $50 million financing in 2011, crowned as one of the most promising internet companies and valued at $460 million.

Now, Yang said that the company has tended to be pragmatic, pointing out that an internet company cannot survive without users or business management. While the former is based on demand and channels, the latter is underpinned by the balance between cost and revenue.

Tan Xinyu contributed to this story.