Testin: A Chinese Startup Partnering with Multiple MNCs

This case deals with a Chinese startup, Testin, forging partnerships with multiple large multinational corporations (“MNCs” in short, e.g., Microsoft, IBM, ARM, Intel). In order to help developers economize the time spent on quality assurance (QA), Testin was founded by Jun Wang with six of his former colleagues working at Pica Corporation in June 2011. In the past years, Testin had served over 800,000 app developers by conducting more than 150 million quality and security tests on over 2.5 million mobile apps through its automated Cloud Testin (云测) service supported by its testing labs and its Crowd Testin service for solving further problems by part-time qualified testers. It had received several rounds of financing totaling over USD 80 million. Many Chinese Internet companies tried to acquire Testin, and a well-known multinational company asked Testin to sign an exclusive service contract. Wang and his partners resisted such offers and were determined that Testin should maintain neutrality. Thinking about the five-year old enterprise, Wang wondered how to ensure Testin could “stay hungry and stay foolish”. A striking feature of these relationships discussed in this case is that the venture is based in an emerging market context (China) whereas several of the key large corporate partners are headquartered in advanced markets. Thus the partnerships being forged are arguably between non-traditional allies.