The world’s most valuable startup ByteDance has set its annual revenue target for this year to an ambitious RMB 100 billion, (US$14.8 billion), according to online news site Jiemian.com, which based its report on several unnamed corporate sources.
That’s double the revenue ByteDance hit last year. In 2018, it had set its revenue target to between RMB50 billion and 55 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion to US$8.1 billion), but only hit the lower end of that target.
ByteDance said it would not comment on rumours when contacted by KrASIA‘s parent company 36Kr.
The Beijing-based company behind the popular news aggregator Toutiao and the short video app Douyin, also known as TikTok outside of China, grew the number of its sales departments from 4 to 10 last year, setting the stage for monetizing the huge user bases in overseas markets including Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States.
Douyin and TikTok combined have more than 500 million active users globally by mid-January. Last December TikTok saw 75 million downloads via App Stores and Google Play worldwide, up 275% compared to the same month in 2017, according to data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower.