AFTER having failed in starting a web business twice in the past 10 years, 34-year-old Wang Liang dipped his toes into the mobile Internet business. This time, he hit pay dirt. Within two years, Wang’s Yhouse, a Shanghai-based app that targets China’s middle class, offering them luxury-lifestyle experiences, has attracted about 2.8 million users. It achieved a revenue of nearly 100 million yuan (US$16 million) in 2014 since its launch the previous year. “If I had moved into the field earlier or later, I wouldn’t have made it. It’s the right time to be in the mobile Web business,” Wang told China Daily.

    Wang is one of countless young startup innovators who have poured into the mobile Web business in recent years as China sees a booming generation of mobile Web users. Young entrepreneurs in their early 20s or 30s are taking their chances in challenging the traditional Internet moguls to help users solve dailylife problems with new apps.

    According to the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2014, China had 632 million Web users, among whom 527 million were mobile Internet users. Smartphone users make up 91.9 percent of mobile phone netizens.

    Hugo Shong, partner of IDG’s Capital venture fund, says that computer and Internet technology has dominated China’s startups for a long time and made legendary entrepreneurs like Ding Lei (founder of NetEase) and Zhang Chaoyang (founder of Sohu). Now as the mobile Web industry has arrived, young people are rushing to catch up.

    Wang Liang says the mobile Web attracts the rich segment of the population who used to stay away from the Internet because of their busy schedules. Using his app, they can arrange for a customized trip, make a reservation for a fine wine party or take part in an equestrian club activity, for example, with just an easy click on their smartphones.

    Wang’s Yhouse provides luxury experiences for the newly rich, who haven’t yet learned how to enjoy life, and aims to offer an exclusive social network for the upper-class. In addition to setting up teams in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Wang has also opened nine more branches in second-tier cities like Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xi’an and Xiamen in the past year.

    Wang was pleasantly surprised that users in second-tier cities are more interested in experiencing the luxury lifestyle, like going to parties where the rich and famous mingle and taking a test drive of a Tesla.

    “Active users of our app are also very young. They were mainly born in the 1980s and 90s,” Wang points out.

    Before setting up his mobile Internet business, Wang tried establishing a dating website for college students in 2004 and then an online booking service for car maintenance in 2008. Both of the startups failed.

    Wang says when he was setting up the dating website, Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which has become one of the biggest online shopping platforms, was still in its infancy. Web portal moguls like NetEase’s Ding Lei were wooed by private ventures. Now these Internet giants and other private ventures are chasing mobile Web startups.

    Wang’s Yhouse has just finished its second round of funding from a U.S. company and he is waiting anxiously for new funding this year because “lots of investment companies are interested in my app.” The app company of about 100 employees is planning to expand its team to 300 later this year.

    “Mobile Web startups are crazier than their Web counterparts. Because China has such a huge base of mobile users, a good idea can attract lots of users in a short time,” says Wang.

    Guo Lie’s app Lian Meng, which literally means “cute face,” was a perfect example last year when it suddenly swept across China’s social networks in one month.

    The app allows users to turn their pictures into cartoons on social networking apps. It saw an unbelievable increase of about 6 million users within a single day in June last year. The craze lasted for a month, with dozens of millions of users, but it has slowed down gradually. Still, Guo’s app lingers on the list of China’s top-50 apps.

    The 26-year-old’s team has no more than 10 employees. All of them are aged 26 or younger. Before he launched his startup, Guo worked for China’s Internet giant Tencent for one year.

    Like Guo, young entrepreneurs with fresh ideas that aim to make a fortune from mobile Web have been springing up across China. They design social network apps that target different demographics, from MOMO, a Tinder-like app for strangers, and wumi (no secret), a social network in anonymity, to service-oriented apps like taxi-hailing apps Didi and Kuaidi, the Chinese versions of Uber.

    While mobile Web businesses are growing, a new wave of apps that provides online to offline (O2O) services are also taking shape.

    Pu Qiantong was the first to take the offline market of traditional Chinese massage service into the mobile Web. With her app Huatuo Jiadao (Huatuo’s Coming — Huatuo is well-known as a great physician in ancient China), mobile users can order house calls from a traditional Chinese medicine therapist instead of having to arrange an appointment to visit a massage club in person.

    A user can see from the app a therapist’s previous work experience, the distance the therapist has to travel to his or her apartment and the assessment of the therapist’s skills by others who have used his or her services.

    Pu says her company has signed up about 100 therapists to provide home massage services in Beijing and Shanghai. Launched at the end of last December, the app had more than 5,000 mobile customers within one month.

    The one-month-old app has just received a 10 million yuan investment. The company plans to attract users in 10 more cities in China this year.

    “Online to offline service in the mobile Web market is definitely hot and popular. I expect more startups to come up this year,” says Pu.

    Pu, 30, leads a team of about 30. She is confident of the success of her app since Chinese people, especially those living in big cities, have a habit of going to a therapist for body or neck massages.

    Pu’s confidence may also come from the good performance of another O2O app, Helijia, which allows users to order home manicure services.

    The app gets an average of 6,000 orders daily from its users after its launch last March. Its founder Meng Xin had succeeded in running a brand of essential oil on a website and a restaurant using social networks before setting up the nail beauty app.

    Experts say the rise of O2O services on the mobile Web can be attributed to the switch of Chinese consumers’ payment habit from using cash to making electronic payments.

    “The next five to 10 years will be a good time for Chinese app companies, especially for those who are overturning the traditional industry with mobile Web,” says Wang Liang.

    “China’s advantage is its large population of mobile Web users. You can’t imagine an app giant coming out of a country like New Zealand. But there’ll be a lot of them in China and the United States,” he says.

    However despite people’s confidence, the O2O market is still in its infancy with a lot of startups dying every year, says Sun Mengzi, from Analysys International.

    Some O2O companies pose a threat to traditional stores while others help boost the sales of brick-and-mortar businesses with Internet technology. But there is no firm that has completely reshaped traditional businesses.

    “There are security concerns with such home delivered services. There is no regulation to guide their development. And many startup models are easily copied,” the analyst says.

    Because there are no successful pioneers to follow, for those who have already jumped in with their creative business ideas and the money landed from investors, a rapid expansion to become the No. 1 player in their respective niche market has become the top strategy for survival.

    Hou Guopeng from Momoda, which offers door-to-door pet cleaning services in Beijing, says he is going to effectively “burn” the investment his company secured and cover more users in 2015.

    “You need to stay ahead on everything. Be the first one to get investment, be the first one to expand to second-tier cites ... Otherwise you will die or be taken over by the largest player,” he says.

    “There is no room for second best in the O2O market.”(SD-Agencies)