The rapid growth in popularity of the social network Clubhouse has not gone unnoticed by tech giants, many of which have already presented or are developing their own counterparts. Chinese venture capital funds, which are behind the country’s social media, have not stood aside either. For example, Tencent Holding Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. have already started testing voice chats on their platforms, and smartphone maker Xiaomi is considering implementing this concept.

The Clubhouse format has appealed to users in China, in part because it appears to discourage government surveillance. The Chinese authorities expressed concern about this issue, after which the Clubhouse was banned in the country.

It is worth noting that not only tech giants, but also small startups are developing the voice chat service in China. One example of such activity is the Dizhua application launched in mid-2019, which is used by about 10 thousand people daily, communicating with each other on various topics. The hype surrounding Clubhouse has led to increased investor interest in the service. More than ten funds have shown interest in the Dizhua startup, which is considering attracting investments for further development.

Another example is Juju, which was originally developed as an analogue of Discord, but after the growing popularity of Clubhouse, it was remade after the model of the American service. The developer Juju has been trying to attract the attention of investors for a long time, but he was not paid attention to. The situation changed in February, when funding offers literally fell in, but it was too late – the developer refused to develop the service.

This example clearly illustrates the harsh realities of the Chinese startup industry, where investors and corporations like Alibaba and Tencent tend to support proven business models that come from overseas and pay little attention to anything new. China’s largest social app, WeChat, was once modeled after WhatsApp, and even the popular TikTok was modeled after Musical.ly, which originally appeared in the US.

Some Chinese investors have shown little interest in promoting a replica of Clubhouse. Instead, they expect developers to demonstrate their own understanding of what a voice chat service should look like. It is obvious that in the future, many applications will appear in China inspired by the success of Clubhouse.