In August 2012 WeChat launched public/official account system which would later be divided into two, Subscription Accounts and Service Accounts — the difference is the latter have more capabilities such as making payments with WeChat Payment. Businesses or public organizations thus can do CRM, marketing, or even sell goods on WeChat. It is reported that there have been some 3 million such accounts on WeChat.
WeChat has been developing APIs for building sophisticated features for public accounts. Thus those accounts are able to offer services from online banking to booking hotels. But most businesses don’t know how to develop software and some even don’t know how to manage a public account on the most popular mobile social platform in China.
Weixinhai (literally means WeChat Sea in Chinese) helps businesses build presence on WeChat. Not only does it manage or promote WeChat official accounts for them, it also develops features for their accounts, such as setting up a storefront with payments supported by WeChat Payment.
Founded in December 2012 — a couple of months after WeChat launched the public account system, Weixinhai claims that some 10 thousand clients are added everyday, making RMB30 million in monthly revenue. The company is closing a RMB80 million (USD13 mn) round of funding, according to Cheng Xiaoyong, CEO of Weixinhai.
Weixinhai isn’t the only one in this business. Adsit has been in online marketing industry since 2007. Now one of their major offerings is WeChat public account development. The company initiated the business last year, serving big names such as Starbucks and P&G. Xue Wenyi, CEO of Adsit, said in an interview last year that the company expected to see tens of millions yuan in revenue from some 60 clients by year end and projected the total revenues would quadruple in 2014.
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