Feature: Meitu wins Brazilian market with photo editing apps

Chinese technology company Meitu Inc has been rocking the Brazilian market for photo editing application programs or apps, and showing that the South American giant is a viable and interesting region for business expansion.

Meitu arrived in Brazil in April 2016. Since then, the company has launched translated versions of some of its main apps, Airbrush and Makeup Plus. In the past year, the number of downloads of Meitu apps rose 840 percent and Meitu obtained 10 million users in the country.

Meitu's Brazilian team had the best performance among its teams outside China. To Ludmilla Veloso, Meitu's country manager for Brazil, it was a matter of making a move at the right time.

"It seems that Brazil was waiting for someone to look at this market. Brazil was ready, and Meitu arrived at the right moment," Veloso told Xinhua recently.

For Meitu, 2016 was a year for validating the Brazilian market, and for establishing Brazil as a region with good cost-benefit relations for the company.

In 2017, Veloso said, the company will launch more apps and focus on increasing the scale of its operations and making the use of Meitu apps a habit.

Veloso said there were differences between the Brazilian and the Chinese ways of doing business. But there are much more similarities than people think at first sight, and with some work, differences can be dealt with.

Reaching the impressive growth in Brazil was a matter of bridging the gap between the Chinese company's products and the needs of Brazilian users. It required a lot of work from Meitu's local team, who studied the local market and analyzed what adaptations had to be made.

The company also worked with micro-influencers and communities on the web to interact with the user base and gather their impressions, suggestions and complaints about the apps. That contact helped build a more complete app which caters to the needs of Brazilian users in a more comprehensive manner.

For example, so far, the most successful Meitu app in Brazil has been Airbrush, which allows more subtle interventions in photographs. That is different from the Chinese preferences.

"Brazilians like a more natural appearance in photos, more discreet interventions," Veloso said, "There is a trend for the return of more natural beauty."

According to Veloso, the adaptations which had to be made in Meitu apps for Brazil has helped improve the company's algorithm, which ultimately leads to improvements on a global scale.

"We are ultimately a beauty platform. And that is why Brazil is very important for China, because the diverse beauty we have here has helped make our algorithm evolve and led to general improvement in the apps," she said, "This acknowledgement of our diversity made the apps grow."

That is an example of how expanding to Brazil can be beneficial for Chinese companies, Veloso believed. Though there are differences between the Brazilian and the Chinese ways of doing business, she said, there are much more similarities than people think at first sight.

"There are a lot of differences, but there are a lot of similarities as well," Veloso stressed.

Chinese companies, especially those in the internet sector, have much to gain from exploring the Brazilian market, she said.

"I think the Chinese are discovering Brazil and I believe we will cooperate more and more in the internet sector. There are several companies already arriving and more will arrive in the future. Brazil is a country where you can make it if you have a good product," she said.

"It is hard work, but with investment and local teams one can make it,"she added.

The beauty sector also has a lot of potential as well, and a lot of room for expansion.

"Brazil is the fourth largest beauty market in the world, after the United States, China and Japan. For a Chinese company, investing in Brazil is viable, cheaper and has a lot of potential," she noted. Endi