Smart choices bring huge dividends as firms walk the extra mile

"If you have a question, search on Zhihu."

Chinese viewers who watched the 2018 World Cup will certainly remember the much-watched commercial for Zhihu, a popular question-and-answer service provider. In the commercial, Chinese actor Liu Haoran asks the viewer again and again what Zhihu is. Though some viewers found the commercial disturbing, it actually worked for Zhihu.

Launched in 2011, the Quora-like knowledge sharing platform is no longer a simple follower of the foreign trendsetter. Fueled by forward thinking investors and venture capital firms, Zhihu is actively embracing the burgeoning paid content boom across the nation, extending to far more businesses than its foreign counterparts do.