Short video platform Kuaishou to give 1b yuan in cash during Spring Festival Gala

Chinese short video platform Kuaishou has become the exclusive interactive partner of the 2020 China Media Group (CMG) Spring Festival Gala, the most-watched annual show on Chinese New Year's Eve, and will offer a whopping 1 billion yuan ($143.1 million) in cash prizes.

On Chinese New Year's Eve, audiences only need to watch a video, which is different from the previous form of texts and graphics, and click "like" to get the red envelope, according to Kuaishou.

Chen Sinuo, vice-president of Kuaishou, said the company will set up more interesting and diversified contents in the whole process of interaction, so that users can have better interactive experiences. But she didn't disclose more details.

Giving cash in red envelopes (hongbao) is a traditional practice during the Spring Festival, to deliver good luck and greetings to family members and friends.

The digital red envelope race during the Spring Festival holiday began heating up since Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd unveiled its hongbao service on its popular instant messaging app WeChat in 2014, drawing millions of new users for its mobile payment service.

The race has escalated since then, with new players, new tricks and record sums of money attracting new users.

So far, Kuaishou has more than 200 million daily active users and over 400 million monthly active users, with more than 200 million content creators recording and sharing their videos on the platform last year.

Short videos are seeing explosive growth in China. The revenue of the short video industry reached 14.01 billion yuan in 2018, up a blistering 520.7 percent year-on-year, and the figure is expected to surpass 55 billion yuan in 2020, said market research company iResearch.