Online search engine Beijing 3721 Technology Co Ltd, whose Chinese language service reaches 60 million Web surfers, is seeking an overseas listing as part of its expansion plans, its chief executive said last Wednesday.

The firm, which signed a deal last year to have its search service embedded in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser released in China, is considering a listing in Hong Kong, Singapore or New York, said Zhou Hongyi.

"We hope to become a public company to help support our growth," the 33-year-old software engineer said at the firm's Beijing headquarters.

"And we'll grow along with the Chinese Internet industry."

He declined to give a timetable for the listing.

Other executives have said the firm would list in 2004, riding the growth in the number of China's Internet users, now second in the world, behind the United States, and a recent rally by Chinese online media firms Sina.com, Sohu.com and Netease.com.

"The Hong Kong market is looking sluggish right now," Zhou said.

"The Singaporean Government has been very open to China-based private firms, and our backer, IDG, has had lots of experience in taking Chinese companies public there."

Zhou expects revenues to more than double, to 300 million yuan (US$36 million), this year compared with last year, when the firm became profitable.

The company's profits would be about 30 per cent of its revenues, Zhou said.

The firm's institutional investors include International Data Group and leading Japanese venture capital firm JAFCO.

No English needed

The five-year-old firm's flagship search service, available on each domestic copy of Internet Explorer, allows users to type in a few Chinese characters directly into the browser address line to find information.

There's no need for users with poor English to remember Web addresses for search sites such as www.google.com or www.sina.com.cn, Zhou said.

"A lot of people ... didn't understand this model at first. They thought it had to be proven in the United States to be successful in China. But US people already speak English," he said.

The firm, whose name "3721" sounds like the phrase "no matter how" in Chinese, makes nearly all of its money from charging 150,000 websites a base fee of US$60 for inclusion on the search engine.

Sites can pay as much as US$600 for premium placement. Another 150,000 government, educational and non-profit websites were listed for free.

The service reaches 90 per cent of China's Internet users, or 68 million people by the end of June, and boasts 30 million key word queries a day, Zhou said.

Another service allows users to set up an e-mail forwarding address composed of a few Chinese characters for use with their Roman-letter accounts.

That service was introduced earlier this month. The firm expects to reach 10 million users, some of them paying customers, by October.

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