The story
Lianjia (formerly Homelink) was founded as a real estate brokerage by Zuo Hui in November 2001 with initially 27 employees.
Due to the competition for real estate brokerages, information was not centralized and it was difficult to maintain accurate up to date information. In April 2018, Zuo, Peng Yongdong and Shan Yigang launched Beike, an online platform that helps match customer to real estate agents. KE was incorporated in July 2018 as a holding company for both Lianjia and Beike.
At the start, Beike drew most of its senior management from Lianjia. It aimed to establish an independent third-party trading platform similar to Taobao that would allow resources to be open to all real estate agents. Zuo came up with the idea of an agent cooperation network after studying multiple service listing systems in the U.S.
KE received financial backing from Tencent, SoftBank Group and Hillhouse Investment.
In August 2020, KE held its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) raising US$2.12 billion. On the first day of trading, the stock jumped 87% valuing the company at just under US$40 billion.
In May 2022, KE became a dual-listed company after it listed its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
From Wikipedia’s article on Beike, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8
