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Domain name provider gets ready for date with bourses
By Wang Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-17 08:07
Many Chinese companies are eagerly anticipating the launch of the nation's NASDAQ-like growth enterprise board (GEB) as a way of fueling their future development. Not least among them is Xiamen35.com Technology, one of the largest domain name registers and enterprise email providers in China. The company sent in its application in July to be listed on the stock exchange specifically designed for domestic start-up companies to raise money. Its application was accepted last month. It is expected that 35.com will be the only hi-tech company of the first group to be listed on the GEB, which is due to launch next month. Gong Shaohui, the company's founder and chief executive, said his goal was to make 35.com one of the world's top 500 IT companies. By listing, he said the company could expand in the SAAS (Software as a Service) market, which he believes will become the company's major revenue generator in the future. Gong graduated from Shanghai Science and Technology University in 1988 and worked for a State-owned computer firm that went bust in 1995, leaving him jobless. However, all was not lost. He was one of the first people in China to be connected to the Internet and he realized its potential as a place to do business. "From the word go, I instinctively knew the Internet would become a huge industry, but I had no idea at all how to tap into the market," Gong said.
Gong went home to Xiamen to establish his business. The day after returning he went to the telecom department to open an Internet account. "I was told that Xiamen had no Internet access," Gong said. Reluctantly, he returned to his former profession of selling computers and software for a living. When the Internet did arrive in Xiamen the following year, the would-be entrepreneur decided to build up a training firm to teach companies how to use it. "It turned out that holding classes was a perfect way to understand how companies were using the Internet," he said. Soon Gong discovered that as more companies launched websites, the demand for domain names and server rental had huge potential. He decided to invest all his money in the new business. Things didn't go well at first. He only found 50 customers in 1997 and he began losing money as well as business partners. But the following year he saw a turnaround. As more companies began to see the value of a presence on the Worldwide Web, the number of new customers rose from two dozen a month to more than 100 a month. Gong's company then became the chief sales partner of NIS, a US firm that dominated the international domain name registration service in 1999. Three years later, Gong's company became the largest domain name registration provider in Asia in terms of customer numbers. In 2003, sensing opportunities to be found in countering rampant junk mails, Gong launched a new email system that could automatically filter spam mails. It was one of the first such services in China and proved to be a big hit. Over the following six years, 35.com's mail system has handled 10 billion emails. That company also developed a popular system that connected customers' email with instant messaging services. This helped it become the largest player in China's enterprise email service market last year, with a share of nearly 20 percent, according to a report from domestic research firm iResearch. The business now is the major revenue generator for 35.com, according to Gong. Since 2006, 35.com has been actively expanding in the management software market. The company now has 11 sales and technology support centers in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai and has more than 1 million customers, including Lenovo, TCL, Mengniu Dairy and CCTV. Gong won't say how much 35.com wants to raise from the market, but he did say the company plans to become the biggest software service provider in China. (For more biz stories, please visit Industries)
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