We have 30 countries where we a a leader or co-leader, mostly in Eastern Europe, the European Union, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as North Africa and southeast Asia. In all of those countries, we?re strong ? we have reached the scale where the new user will find a lot of his friends in there. In many of them, we have 90% market share.
John Koetsier: How did you achieve that scale?
Agaoua: One reason was speed ? our product was there before the other ones localized. Also, we put a lot of effort into creating local partnerships, especially in sports and media. And we have deliberate strategy about integrating those partnerships immediately after user acquisition. For sports ? we just love sports, and build out exclusive content via chatbots and group chat with sports stars that make it attractive.
We?re now trying to fight back ? partly by targeting specific segments like immigrants, who need to communicate back home to places where Viber is strong.
|