Hello, listeners. Welcome to this special episode
for 2025. Hi, everyone. But in this episode,
we don't have a company for you. We did not prep.
Minor prep. Minor prep. We have some things for
you, and we're going to chop it up into a few
segments. First is a recap on the seven episodes
that we have done already. Second is we have
some numbers reveal for how we've done so far.
The third bit is we each have a few questions
for each other about our favorite company of
the year. Yep. So welcome to our year end recap
episode. All right. So what have we made so far?
What have we achieved so far? We have seven episodes
published in 2025. We're going to get to that
sound later. We'll explain in just a bit. And
that's Ali cheering for us about the seven episodes
that we have already completed. So let's do just
a one -liner for each episode just to sum it
up in case you missed any one of the episodes.
And in case you want to listen to any of these
episodes. Yeah. One -liner summaries. Let's go.
Number one, Insta360 is our first company. It
is a leading Chinese hardware company specializing
in design and manufacture 360 -degree action
cameras that compete directly with GoPro and
DJI. Company number two is DeepSeek. DeepSeek
is a cutting -edge Chinese AI research company
founded by Hedge Fund Capital. It develops and
releases powerful LLM models for global use.
Number three, we're moving on to an FMCG company,
Red Bull, an Austrian company with Thai heritage,
best known for its energy drink and its massive
global marketing presence through ownership of
sports teams, particularly in F1 and other extreme
sports. And our number four company is Xiaomi.
And specifically, we covered the EV segment,
the electric vehicle segment of Xiaomi this year.
And it's basically a division of the Chinese
consumer electronic giant Xiaomi parent company.
And it focused on manufacturing and selling high
performance smart electric cards like the SU7.
SU7 and U7. Yes. And the YU7. Yeah. All right.
Moving on to the next one. Do you want to do
Pot Mart? I can. Okay, I'm going to steal Pot
Mart. It is obviously my favorite episode of
this year. Pot Mart is a Chinese entertainment
and retail company that is a global leader in
the designer toy and blind box market known for
creating and licensing popular IP like Molly
and Skull Panda. And obviously, the recently...
Super popular, Labubu. Yes, Labubu. The next
one we have Game Science, one of my favorite
companies of the year. A Chinese video game developer
that gained global recognition for creating the
highly successful action role -playing game Black
Myth Ukon. If you haven't gotten a chance to
play, you can go watch YouTube videos about this
game. And it's based on the Chinese mythology
Journey to the West. And lastly, our most recent
episode is a company called Anta, which is a
major Chinese multinational sportswear company
that operates a multi -brand portfolio, including
its namesake brand Anta, Fila within China, and
several international outdoor brands like Artorex
and Salomon. via the company that they acquired
called Amersports. All right. That will be all
of the seven companies. Thank you so much for
those who tuned in and listened to the stories
behind those companies. And if you like our content,
please leave a comment or rate us on Spotify
or Apple Podcast. That wraps up. the seven companies
that we've covered this year. Let's move on to
some numbers. So in case you're wondering, you're
obviously one of our listeners. Who else are
our listeners? How many locations slash cities
do we have listenership in? So the official number
is 156 cities. Which is crazy. As of this afternoon.
I was pretty shocked. So 156 locations. And when
we looked at our map, there was dots all around
the world. in every single continent. And we're
so pleased to see that. So thank you for tuning
into the podcast, wherever you're based in. I
really appreciate it. A couple months ago, when
I saw that list, it was less than 100. And now
we slowly moved on to 156. It's really hard to
keep track of all the dots, but thank you for
listening to us. Thank you for listening. Let's
hit 200. So second question is, what is our most
listened episode? So we just went over all seven
episodes. Which ones are our top three? I was
surprised, not surprised about the results. Let's
start with number three. Yeah. So number three
is the episode on Xiaomi EV. Guessing that there
are a lot of people who are interested in the
hardware manufacturing slash the EV manufacturing
side of China. Or like people who wants to purchase
an EV. Yeah. So Xiaomi EV ranks number three.
Second one. Second one is drum roll Insta360.
Yes. And that is one of our earliest episodes
with what I think is great content, but with
a lot of sound quality issues. So thank you again
for sitting through this episode and bearing
the sound quality. The content is great. It's
just we it took us a while to. Make sure the
sound is optimized. To stabilize and to find
a sound engineer. Yeah. Yeah. And the first one,
actually, I'm not completely surprised about
at all because it made major headlines this year
and it's Deep Seek. Yay. Yeah. And it continues
to rise. You can see the listen curve of Deep
Seek just always. Continues to gain attention.
Continues to gain attention. Maybe I'm jumping
ahead a little bit, but DeepSeq will continue
to release new models. And every time it releases
a model, someone search for DeepSeq listens to
our episode. Thank you, guys. One fun fact about
DeepSeq, which is DeepSeq really gained a lot
of momentum in India. Because it's free. And
also a lot of developers are using the B2B level
models. So very searchable. One of the cheaper
options out there. Cost effective. All right.
Moving on to the top three cities out of the
156. Yes. Out of the 156. Let's start with number
three. Number three is a city slash a country.
And that is Singapore. Yeah. Well, thank you
for the listeners who are based in Singapore.
We also have a lot of friends who are based in
Singapore. So if you're in Singapore, we'll tune
in. Thank you so much and appreciate your interest
in China business. And yeah, leave comments.
We have on our future research list a lot of
Singaporean companies as well. So look forward
to those episodes. If you want to find out which
one, leave a comment. And number two is a city
in the US. Which I'm quite surprised about. I'm
surprised as well. Out of all the cities. Yeah.
I thought it would be like SF, but it turns out
it's Los Angeles. Yes. Thank you, LA. Yeah. Thank
you, LA. Show me a lot of love. And number one
is Sydney. I'm not surprised because we knew
that when we were looking at episode numbers
earlier on in the season, it's always been, I
think Australia has always been on the top of
our list. So there's definitely a lot of interest
in Australia about Chinese business and about
ascent. Coming on to the top three countries
slash regions, starting from, I guess, number
three. And then there are two locations slash
cities that are ranked equally on number three.
One is Singapore, and then the other one is Hong
Kong itself as a standalone listenership spot.
Both of them are around 10 % of our current listenership.
Hong Kong has a little bit more. Number two is
basically the same ranking as the city list,
right? Yeah, same ranking. Yeah, US, which accounts
for about 30%. And the last bit. I'm genuinely
surprised. Wait, no surprise or surprise? I'm
surprised. I'm surprised. I thought US would
be number one, but it turns out this country
is number one. That's true. We did something
pretty well. Yeah, you did something pretty well.
Thank you, all the friends in Australia. I know
who you are. No, but we did. So I guess to let
everyone know, we did a lot of offline promotion,
mostly starting with our friends and family and
our colleagues and whatnot. And so a bunch of
my friends actually were in Australia. and family
are in Australia. So that could be one of the
reasons. But also, if you are tuning in from
Australia and you don't know me at all or can
at all, please leave a comment and let us know
like what makes you tune in and what are you
interested about in regards to the Chinese business
landscape? Because we'd love to cover topics
that you're interested in next year. I guess
jumping, echoing what you said, I think a lot
of The reason why the U .S. is currently at number
two is I did also personally send links to a
lot of friends in the U .S. and some of them
are either working in tech industry or investment
industry or attending graduate school of business
at various locations. They wrote me wonderful
feedback about what I should be doing. But once
again, friends, if you hear me here, could you
please write those comments in Spotify and Apple
Podcasts? That would be great. I would really
appreciate it. Like message Penn individually,
but also write comments. I love the comments
that you've written down. It's genuine. I have
implemented a lot of the things that you want
for change. Okay, so actually moving on to the
feedback section. We will also attach a very
small survey with this episode. And the reason
behind this little survey is that we get to know
you, our listeners, better. Please tell us what
you do and what would you hope to listen to so
that in the year of 2026, we have future seasons.
We will cover exactly what you want to hear and
what you want to listen to and what you want
to explore in Asia. Exactly. So we picked the
first seven topics, but we like your input to
help us pick the next seven or 14 or, you know,
how many ever we will produce over the years.
Just let us know. We actually did get a lot of
feedback, whether it is through individual chats.
or through your comments on Apple Podcasts and
Spotify and we made some adjustments already
thanks to your feedbacks and one of which was
mentioned earlier which is our sound quality
so if you have been with us since episode one
I really hope you hear a drastic change in sound
quality. On top of the sound quality, the other
thing is we tried to tweak the way that we discuss
and we try to do the wholesome storytelling and
we try to make improvements each time we do it.
We actually tried different note -taking styles
a couple of times in different ways. We started
with season one with only seven episodes. And
as of just now, Guess how many companies we have
on our gigantic to -do list. We're going to be
with you for a while. Yes. Do you want to run
through the entire list? Yes, we're going to.
How many do we have? We have, including the first
seven, we have 100 names listed on that episode
list right now. So it's going to be a while.
12, 13 years? Yeah, it keeps getting longer and
longer. Yeah. Let's go to company of the year.
Company of the Year. Company of the Year. So
Linda, what is... It's so hard. I like all seven.
Which one did you pick? I was really debating
between two and obviously everyone knows my favorite
is Pop Mart. But I think when we cover Pop Mart,
Pop Mart has already risen to its... Not as ultimate
potential, but it's probably like a few months
after the whole hype. And so between PopMart
and now, there wasn't too much news going on.
So I was debating between PopMart and Xiaomi.
And why Xiaomi is because when we covered Xiaomi,
U7 was only released, right? But now. But now.
So I remember specifically in that episode that
I quoted this number, 350 ,000 units. Oh, they've
passed that, right? They've passed that. And
this is only half a year, right? So that was
my kind of annual projection. They passed that
by last month, so November. And then December,
they're going to sell a bit more. So, yeah, I
mean, obviously, I do have to comment. There
was a car accident that made the news that kind
of drove their, I guess, negative publicity for
a period of time. But overall, if you're, you
know, if I'm recapping what happened since we
covered that episode, this company has impressed
me a lot. Yeah. What about yours? Just to jump
on the Xiaomi. a bit and it was also in my top
three list but didn't make it to the final cut
but i do agree with you on how how well it did
at the end of the year it did so well that it
made it it made to a few um really large youtubers
it caught the attention for marcus brownlee And
Marcus Brantley had a new channel. It's called
Autofocus. And that reviews exclusively cars
and a lot of which are EV, newer models and newer
versions of EV. And one of the newest episodes
that was released just December 6th was an episode
on Xiaomi Su7. And Marcus was really excited
about some of the features. And the title for
that episode is, if China is building this EV,
are we cooked? Well, obviously, when he said
cooked, The conclusion, you can watch the whole
video and make your own judgment, but the idea
is the car feels great. It feels more than what
a $45 ,000 car. And so I think that's a fair
comment, at least for this car. We wouldn't say,
oh, this is the perfect EV that everyone should
have, but the value goes beyond the price. Yeah,
Chinese EVs are, including Xiaomi and BYD and
all the others, are just... Good value for money.
Yeah. Yeah, which alerts a lot of car manufacturers
out there, for sure. I feel like it's disruptive.
Yeah, absolutely. But so who won? Oh, who won?
Okay. And for me, sorry, this is... kind of love
at first sight and it stays on number one in
my, in the bottom of my heart is still Insta360.
Sorry. It's just, I love this company so much.
I'm surprised. I thought it would be Leijun.
Oh, really? Cause you like, you obviously watch
so many. Oh, I was like fangirling. You are really
fangirling. Let me explain. I did watch a lot
of the content that he produced. In fact, I did
watch the newest documentary that he produced
about the, uh, the newest test that, uh, Su7
and U7 run, uh, in. Okay. So still Fangirl, but
Insta360. Insta360 remains number one. Why? The
reason being, well, first of all, we posted the
company before the actual IPO. And we, after
just a... Month after we published the first
episode, that's when they IPO'd. And right after
the IPO, JK, who almost was never on any media
or news coverage, he became viral. And he did
just a couple more interview sessions. So I was
listening to one of his Chinese interviews. In
April, back in April. Oh, right after IPO. Yeah,
right after the IPO. I just wanted to see that,
you know, what is on his mind and where is he
taking this company towards? And what does he
want to do? A couple of things that I found quite
interesting. Well, first of all, he sees the
first competition with GoPro as sort of an exam
to building a product. In 2017, Insta360's revenue
was only GoPro's 140th. And in 2019, it became
110th. And now it's about the same, side to side.
Wow. Yeah. And he also made a relatively snarky
comment about GoPro. Because right now... You
can do that when you're ready. In the 360 slash
action camera landscape. Well, obviously there
are. number one number two and number three and
so the snarky comment that he made about gopro
is the interviewer asked him about what do you
think of gopro and his comment was if you're
okay with being number three you don't really
need to do anything you don't have to always
compete like number one and number two are competing
against each other okay so so that was i find
that to be you know a bit more spicy than i expected
it is spicy but it's also in chinese so no one
in gopro headquarters well so i think obviously
it is worthy of an opponent right like gopro
still is one of the most favored action camera
for a lot of surfers and for different scenarios
but But I think to compete with a Chinese hair
work company, it takes more than just an idea.
You actually have to have full control on your
supply chain. And they did this brilliantly marketing
to global audiences because I just got the latest
number where they grow year over year for sales
for over 90 % year over year. And their annual
year over year, I think, is 70%. For this year,
so even after IPO, they continue to grow and
it's growing abroad, not in domestic China. So
I feel like they've... This is beyond my expectations.
Yeah. Because I would think that they somehow
penetrated the target market and they're already
number three. So now they're going... Still growing.
They're going after DJI. Okay. My second point
is about... DJI, this head -to -head competition
with DJI, because in the interview, some of the
hottest debated question was, okay, so now you're
a, you know, IPO company, you're an action camera.
Hello, guess who is your opponent, right? DJI.
Obviously, this is a big target that you cannot
miss. So how are you going to compete with them?
Insta360 recently released their first drone
camera. Yeah. And that drone camera is called
Anti -Gravity A1 in 8K. It's a 360 -degree drone.
And guess what? DJI also started building a 360
camera. It's called Osmo 360. So the two started
competing against each other head -to -head in
the market. That each other's are. Exactly. Oh,
that's not good. That's going to eat up. Because
both of them also have this similar supply chain
in China. To be honest, I watched the whole video.
I've done the specs checking. I watched influencers
who use their cameras, new cameras to produce
the content. What happened to no research? Not
no research. I'm just watching a couple of videos.
what my eyes can do the best to detect whether
there is any difference between the videos that
they produce. I think both products are great.
Like my eyes cannot visibly tell the difference
between A or B. So if you're a hardware geek
and maybe you're going to see S2026, you can
see it for yourself and decide which one's better.
But for me, you know, they're... all equally
very good in terms of specs and as an amateur
user i wouldn't say this is a yeah as a consumer
i can't tell i can't tell yeah as a consumer
i'm looking forward to price drops jk mentioned
something about uh you know if you're competing
against dji and listing from the best case scenario
to the worst case scenario so like obviously
he has thought this through So clearly the whole
market is going to grow. Maybe my revenue will
go up and my market share will decrease because
of DJI will always be in this market. And in
the better scenario, I will not suffer so much
in the profit margin. But in the not so great
scenario, if the other product really is great,
then my profit is going to suffer. But in which
case the consumers will benefit, right? Because
you get better products with lower price. I have
my guesses about where this is going, but we'll
see next year. We'll see next year. We'll continue
to watch it. But seriously, if you guys are going
to CES 2026, please take a look and see which
one is your favorite camera. And Jake, he said
he's still interested in long -term sustainable
business. There was a fun question that's directed
to him that's asked by the interviewer. She said,
if you're not doing Insta360, hypothetically,
what do you think you'll be doing right now?
And JK's answer just surprised me. Which is?
He said, I could, you know, maybe I will have
a design agency. What? And I will still be designing
products. He has a thing for it. Okay. Not surprising.
Or. I will become a chef. Surprising. One can
have many interests. True. One can have many
interests. Yeah. And he seems like he's really
enjoying what he's doing and he wants to build
a world -class product. a world -class company
and it's shifting Insta360's strategy from product
number one to, oh, I want to be taking care of
my company. I want the organization to grow as
a whole. So I think that's pretty sweet. Yeah,
it's growing. Anyways, so that's my company of
the year. And moving on to question number two,
things we should have included in the episode
but forgot. What did you forget? First of all,
let me just say there's so many because at least
for the first few episodes, each of us takes
in on average a notebook or not notebook, but
like a document. Gigantic notebook. That is on
average for me, it's 22 pages. That's about right.
So with pictures and charts and everything included.
Exactly. So even, you know, with two hours, which
is a long time, I know, with two hours, there's
no way to cover all of them. So to condense this,
I'm just going to give one fact that I really,
really hope that I included during the episode.
And this is obviously about PopMart. So the ticker
symbol. Wait, what? Ticker symbol. The stock
ticker symbol for PopMart in the Hong Kong Stock
Exchange is 9992. Oh. It's okay if you have no
idea. So in Hong Kong, like your ticker symbol
is all in numbers, which is unlike the New York
Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, which is the alphabetical.
So in Hong Kong, all the companies that are listed
are represented using numbers and you get to
pick the number. So Potmar picked 9992. If you
read it in Chinese, it will make sense. Yes.
So in Chinese, it's called 9992. Sounds exactly
the same as long, which is the length of time
long. And then er sounds similar to I, which
is love. So the ticker symbol basically says,
please love us for a long time. Cute. Romantic.
I know, it's kind of cute. They personally picked
it. Sounds like it's a lovely cute fact that
they really put a lot of love into this. Yeah,
and it's so suitable for Pop Mart. yeah like
love us forever you're a real fan let's please
just take a second to congratulate linda on acquiring
her first labubu yeah and yeah can you tell us
a little bit more about your labubu please what
color what kind of clothes does it have right
now it does have clothes so i actually end up
getting two because the first one i i i blind
box right so the first one I dropped wasn't the
color I wanted I got the second one the second
one I dropped wasn't the color I wanted so I
wanted orange because I'm a huge McLaren fan
and I bought the clothes For it already. So the
first one I got was a pink one. And then the
second one I got was a blue one. Oh, you got
a third one? I didn't get a third one because
as much as I love Pop Mart, I don't want to gamble.
So I don't want to, you know, I want to stop
when I need to stop because I feel like this
is a path where I just can't go back on. If I
purchase a third one, what if there's a fourth
one? What if I want to get the black one? holes
but interestingly what happened was i bought
as a present uh i bought one as a present but
i didn't open it for a friend's birthday and
when she opened it she wanted a blue one because
she's a red bull fan Just like me. I know. And
when she opened it, guess what color it was?
It was blue. It was orange. It was orange. Oh,
so you swapped. So we swapped. Great. So it's
a win -win situation. Except I bought three black
boxes. It was still a win -win situation. Yeah.
Which is not a lot, according to a lot of people
out there who bought way more than me. I also...
So this is interesting. What else did you buy?
I didn't buy. I bought other stuff from PopMart,
yes. But I remember in the episode, I mentioned
that I couldn't get it through PopMart's official
channels. So there are resellers. On Xiaohongshu.
With a lot of certainty. Yeah, Xiaohongshu is
kind of the Instagram equivalent, is it? Or Instagram
11 .8 equivalent in China where they do live
streaming. Social commerce platform. Yeah, and
I realized that there's this business model.
Not only do you sell secondhand, which I do not
encourage, but I didn't get it at a huge premium.
It was reasonable price. Not only do they sell
secondhand, they get the stuff from PopMart,
they live stream it and they open it on the live
stream so you can participate in the opening.
I remember you showing me the video. Yeah, which
is, which is like, it's a crazy good business
model and I will watch it for like an hour, which
is like the platform gets my engagement rate
and then it gets my money. This is, mind -blowing
when it comes to like the the byproduct of pop
mart being so popular it propelled this whole
industry i mean when it's adrenaline mixed with
dopamine yeah right yeah but not encouraged guys
not encouraged i spent probably five five percent
extra on the on the blind box um but yeah it's
uh man fun to watch secondary market blind box
opening caution and you get to watch other people's
blind box opening yeah what did you forget okay
the the one thing that i forgot in the xiaomi
ev episode still that one because it's so rich
it's so dense and i had a question about the
car racer who did the first test at the newberg
ring and remember we talked about this British
driver. Yes. His name is David Petard, who is
a qualified driver in Europe and blah, blah.
Oh, great. There is another mystery man. Oh,
okay. He showed up multiple times. A driver?
A driver. A Chinese driver who tested out Su
-7's prototype in the Shanghai racetrack. And
he also tested out the cars in all of the Chinese
tracks. And his name is Zhenzhou Chen. Does his
name ring a bell to you at all? Okay. And I don't
blame you for that. I looked into him because
I... I'm aware of ever since I started watching
Formula One with you and all the other car racing
games. Oh no, should I know this? No, no, no.
You started to notice a few Chinese names. And
really there's only less than a handful of names
who are Chinese, right? Who either show up in
Formula One or other endurance car races. Some
of the most noticeable ones are Zhou Guan Yu,
Xiao Zhou, and Ye Yifei, like the World Endurance
Championship. And Ren Zhou's name didn't show
up anywhere. So I was genuinely curious about
who is this person who is driving Xiaomi's car.
And it turns out this guy is a vehicle dynamics
engineer. He was previously... a car racer but
he's primarily a car engineer and did you know
where he used to work super fun red bull jili
jili yeah he used to work for the jili institute
of research he's absolutely not a tier one driver
but he cares deeply about about building an ev
Not a super famous driver in China, but he test
drove Xiaomi's prototype Su7 in all of the China
race rings. Oh, interesting. And you do need
a license to test drive. You need a license to
do that because in the documentary videos that
I checked out, he was making comments, not just
about the lap speed, like what time he wants
to achieve. comparing to Porsche so I was thinking
you must be a pro to do that and after the race
he would reveal all the numbers with the with
the other engineers that said so I'm like oh
you actually know how to make a car like who
are you so I did a little research it's actually
really cool being an engineer and a racer at
the same time And you would know, oh, this is
how I feel in the car. And when you get out of
the car, oh, this thing has to be fixed. Wouldn't
that be cool? Yeah. So that's one thing that
I forgot. He continues to show up in all of Xiaomi's
documentaries. So I got interested. Okay. Yeah.
I will keep mine. I remember this guy. So that
is our favorite companies of the year and the
things that we forgot. Oh, one more thing. The
cat sound. Yes, we need to address the cat sound.
We typically record at home, and I'm very lucky
that Linda is a neighbor. The cat sound that
you noticed in the last two episodes is because
I do have a little cat. Queen. Yeah, she's very
sassy. And it's wintertime. So sometimes when
we're recording, we shut the door and she feels
very lonely so that she would want to come in
and, you know, make an appearance and wants attention.
So excuse the cat sound. It may or may not continue
to appear in the future episodes, but we hope
that you can bear with us. She's very lovely.
She's a very good company for recording. Our
secret third host. All right. I think. As we
know, any special wishes for year 2026? Things
you want to achieve? I want to get, I won't say
the exact number, but it's in my mind, but I
want to get X number of reviews. Yes, guys, if
you listen this far. My only wish is I truly,
genuinely want to know you a bit more. And if
you're listening to this episode, it's not just
about one comment. I actually want to know why
you're curious about this and how did you find
out about us? And thank you for your support
so far. Please continue to... you know, invest
your time with us. And we really hope that we
get to bring you to every single corner of the
Asia that we know. And let's learn about those
companies, great businesses together. Yes, let's
do it together. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.
Please rate us or leave us comment on Spotify
and Apple podcast. And that's a wrap for 2025.
Yay.