An agricultural tech company is the largest IPO since Uber

If you're looking for the next big IPO along the lines of something ... Uber ... check out this quirky tech company that, shockingly, doesn't target young and trendy urban users, but farmers instead. And it's not the FarmersOnly dating app. It's Chinese, and it's growing to be the biggest tech IPO since Uber's IPO in 2019. The Chinese company Kuaishou (Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co. Ltd) is the pioneer of short videos and is supported by the Chinese giant Tencent. If you haven't heard about it, it should probably be on your radar. It debuted in Hong Kong on Friday and reached a valuation of $ 160 billion hours later. Its main competitor? You guessed it ... TikTok's Chinese twin "Douyin". Kuaishou was expected to raise $ 5.4 billion from the sale of 365 million shares, making it the largest tech IPO in the world since Uber went public for $ 8.1 billion in May 2019. ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, was valued at $ 180 billion in its most recent capital raise, and the competition will heat up significantly if the company gets away with its plans to get listed in Hong Kong this year as well. "I can't remember anyone who has achieved this kind of exceptional performance for such a big IPO," said Ronald Wan, CEO and founder of Hong Kong investment firm Partners Capital, quoted by the Financial Times. Even if the competition is fierce, Kuaishou has a niche: It focuses on a completely different user base, 85% come from smaller cities and more rural areas. And it has more daily active users than Twitter or Snapchat itself. Outside of China, it was a complete stranger to its dazzling debut in Hong Kong, which saw many investors sit up and take notice. But within China, what started as a GIF creation tool in 2011 has grown into a hugely popular short video and live streaming platform that has big plans for e-commerce and game distribution, according to Protocol. Douyin has around 600 million daily active users (as of August 2020), while Kuaishou has 776 monthly active users. But what is attractive to investors is the online shopping element of this short form video streamer. Protocol describes it as "part Twitch, part QVC," and that's a potentially lucrative vertical where influencers host live events to promote their products and Kuaishou earns a commission on everything sold on the platform. At the same time, the platform is built in such a way that merchants can also sell through third parties, as they have entered into partnerships with giant e-commerce companies like JD.com and Alibaba. Could something go wrong? Yes, that's China, and the Communist Party is feeding its tech giants on one hand to bring Beijing closer to global tech dominance and on the other hand trying to cage these unruly beasts back into their cage where they can control them. It's a tricky balancing act that has recently brought tech leaders (especially Jack Ma of the Ant Group) into direct conflict with the country's leadership. That means there is a significant amount of regulatory uncertainty for any large tech company, and with this staggering initial public offering, Kuaishou will be under intense scrutiny.