Riding the livestreaming digital wave

Young HK entrepreneurs are finding their feet in the Bay Area, where the digital economy has seen rapid transformation in recent years, stimulating the consumer market and creating jobs in the face of the COVID-19 threat. 

When Ronald Cheng Pang-cheung chose to start a media company in Shenzhen in 2015 to help farmers in the remote regions of Guangdong province market their products, there was no such thing as TikTok and hardly any live e-commerce platforms on the internet.

The 27-year-old from Hong Kong had to rely on Tencent's WeChat public accounts, which, at that time, were criticized for being "unfriendly" to users wishing to put out a video.

Lacking business experience and funding, his enterprise was a non-starter and was soon tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. Not only did he fail to deliver farmers' produce to the tables of consumers, he couldn't make ends meet and had to survive on instant noodles for three months.

But his fortunes took a turn for the better a year later in the form of a viral video. A real-estate company asked Cheng to devise a marketing project concerning a show-business celebrity couple's divorce drama. So, he produced a show asking people in the streets whether they would choose a house or their children in a hypothetical divorce case.

The video, which sparked a heated debate, drew 30 million views within two days of its release on video hosting platforms, earning Cheng 1 million yuan (US$149,000) from investors and several media projects, including advertising, making web series and online movies.

Two years later, when the couple officially divorced, Cheng's company had landed on the emerging viral social networking service Douyin 鈥