Breaking even in China - Marc van der Chijs

China: a tough IT market via Wikipedia

Becoming a successful IT entrepreneur in China, like Marc van der Chijs of the Spil Group Asia, is not easy as many US giants like Yahoo, Google and eBay had a rough time at the hands of the domestic competitors. But Van der Chijs made the grade, first with video sharing host Tudou.com and now as the CEO of a gaming company. He tells in an upcoming book, reproduced in Alibaba.com
He tells about joining his latest company:

“I figured, they know about games and I know something about China, so we might just be able to make it work,” said Van der Chijs. He and the Dutch company set up Spil Game Asia in Shanghai in January 2006.
He worked part-time on Spil Games Asia at first, continuing to run his trading business and help oversee Tudou. But the gaming company’s prospects were so bright that he soon took it on full time.
“Now, we have 75 staff in total, two websites and about 32 million visitors monthly,” said Van der Chijs in late 2008. “Our traffic is about 40 percent of Tudou’s.”
Almost all of Van der Chijs’s staff are local Chinese – people he hired not for their English skills but for their business acumen. “Many foreigners judge their staff by their ability to speak English and they promote the wrong people as a result.”
By the end of 2008, Spil Games Asia was already breaking even. Its revenue came from advertising, which Van der Chijs used for marketing the sites and to attract more users.

Marc van der Chijs by Fantake via Flickr

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Marc van der Chijs is also a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you want him at your conference or meeting? Do get in touch.

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