Warm congratulations to BOSS Zhipin on its successful Nasdaq listing! | Gaorong Ventures News

On the evening of June 11 Beijing time, BOSS Zhipin, China's largest online recruitment platform, officially listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BZ, with an IPO price of $19 per ADS. The company issued a total of 48 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) in the offering. IPO underwriters hold an over-allotment option for approximately 7.2 million additional ADS.

Gaorong Ventures led BOSS Zhipin's Series C financing round in 2016 as one of the lead investors, and participated in multiple subsequent funding rounds.

"We are fortunate to live in a rapidly developing country with 900 million workers and 40 million enterprises, catching the wave of a technological revolution and an era of entrepreneurial explosion — this has given us the soil and air to survive and thrive," said Richard Zhao, founder, chairman and CEO of BOSS Zhipin, at the listing ceremony. He added that BOSS Zhipin will continue to advance technology investment and product innovation, striving to serve even greater numbers of China's small and micro enterprises and long-tail workers.

Michael Mao, founding partner of Gaorong Ventures, commented: "Since Gaorong Ventures first invested in and partnered with BOSS Zhipin in 2016, we have witnessed the company build a disruptive recruitment product for the mobile internet era. By dramatically improving enterprise hiring efficiency while significantly reducing recruitment costs, BOSS Zhipin opened up an incremental market that traditional online recruitment services had failed to reach, growing into China's largest online recruitment platform. We warmly congratulate BOSS Zhipin on its successful Nasdaq listing, and congratulate Richard Zhao and the team!"

"Mobile + Intelligent Matching + Direct Chat" Expands the Incremental Market for Online Recruitment

Since its founding, BOSS Zhipin has been committed to addressing the pain point that small and medium-sized enterprises and the vast population of long-tail job seekers have not received adequate recruitment and job search services. Through its industry-pioneering direct-hire model, the company has improved hiring efficiency for enterprises and job search efficiency for individuals. The direct-hire model is mobile-first, built on intelligent matching, and enables direct online chat between job seekers and enterprise users.

Benefiting from the proliferation of mobile internet and the era's dividends of innovation and entrepreneurship, BOSS Zhipin has grown continuously alongside China's economic development over its seven years since founding.

BOSS Zhipin's average MAU in 2020 was 19.8 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 73.2% compared to 2019's average MAU. By March 2021, BOSS Zhipin's MAU had further grown to 30.6 million. In terms of average mobile MAU growth rate in 2020, BOSS Zhipin was the fastest-growing company among China's top five online recruitment platforms.

Against the backdrop of small and medium-sized enterprises being widely dispersed, having weak brand power, and operating with limited hiring budgets, the direct-hire model provides SME owners with the ability to proactively communicate with job seekers, receive instant feedback, and access recruitment services at low or even zero cost — offering a practical and effective solution to the societal challenge of SME hiring. As of March 31, 2021, BOSS Zhipin had 13 million verified enterprise users, serving 6.3 million verified enterprises. Among the enterprises served by BOSS Zhipin, 82.6% were SMEs.

On the job seeker side, BOSS Zhipin allows users to selectively hide their information from enterprise users; only with the job seeker's explicit permission can enterprise users access contact information and full resumes. As of March 31, 2021, BOSS Zhipin served 85.8 million verified job seekers, including white-collar users, gold-collar users, university students, and blue-collar workers.

BOSS Zhipin views technology capability as core to the platform. Continuous upgrades to its intelligent matching system enable more precise matching results; the operation of screening and monitoring systems provides ongoing verification of the authenticity of enterprise job postings.

The direct-hire model has also expanded the incremental market for online recruitment services. According to the prospectus, BOSS Zhipin's revenue primarily comes from online recruitment services for enterprise customers. Clients can make single small purchases online, or enter into larger, longer-term service contracts offline.

In the 12 months ending March 2021, BOSS Zhipin served 2.89 million paying enterprises. In 2020, BOSS Zhipin achieved revenue of 1.94 billion yuan, a year-over-year increase of 94.7%; in Q1 2021, revenue reached 790 million yuan, up 179.0% year-over-year.

Michael Mao noted that over its seven years of development, BOSS Zhipin has proven the universality of its product model, gradually expanding from the internet industry to all industries; and validated the feasibility of its business model, achieving nearly doubled revenue growth in 2020. "BOSS Zhipin's innovative product form has forged an entirely new business model, driving up the penetration rate of online recruitment across the overall recruitment market and opening up a completely new incremental market. Looking further, recruitment itself represents massive demand — today there are over 40 million enterprises operating in China, each with hiring needs and willingness to pay, making the market opportunity extremely broad."

Serving More Users with More Diverse Offerings, Opening Up the Imagination for Enterprise Services

According to CIC Consulting projections, driven by the development of digital new-economy business formats, favorable innovation and entrepreneurship policies, and intensifying competition for talent among enterprises, China's online recruitment market is expected to grow from 55.1 billion yuan in 2020 to 223.4 billion yuan in 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate of 32.3%.

BOSS Zhipin stated in its prospectus that proceeds from the offering will be used to increase investment in job recruitment technology infrastructure and research, upgrade AI and other technology capabilities related to recruitment services, and increase investment in new products and services to serve more regions and user types.

"We firmly believe that the industry ultimately serves people: by helping people develop, we promote more rational allocation of human resources and create greater value for society," said Richard Zhao. "Going forward, as a public company, we will shoulder greater responsibility and be even more motivated to apply cutting-edge technology to what we consider 'the most important work in the world.'"

"From an enterprise services perspective, BOSS Zhipin is a standout among China's enterprise service companies, exhibiting characteristics of high-growth global enterprise service companies such as consumerization of B2B and network effects," Michael Mao further observed. "BOSS Zhipin's success also opens up our imagination for enterprise services — that enterprise service companies can achieve exponential growth, and that increasingly more enterprises are willing to pay for truly valuable services."

Amid China's enterprise digital transformation, upgrade, and cost-efficiency imperatives, Gaorong Ventures remains bullish on services that can genuinely deliver value to enterprises, and will continue to discover and invest in outstanding companies in the enterprise services track.