Company: ZHIHF
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000729
Chunk: 89

Company: Zhihu Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 89
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 market circumstances, or other factors may delay the deposit of Class A ordinary shares in exchange for the ADSs or the withdrawal of Class A ordinary shares underlying the ADSs. Investors will be prevented from settling or effecting the sale of their securities during such periods of delay. In addition, we cannot assure you that any exchange for Class A ordinary shares into ADSs (and vice versa) will be completed in accordance with the timelines that investors may anticipate.

Table of Contents

Furthermore, the depositary for the ADSs is entitled to charge holders fees for various services including for the issuance of ADSs upon deposit of Class A ordinary shares, cancelation of ADSs, distributions of cash dividends or other cash distributions, distributions of ADSs pursuant to share dividends or other free share distributions, distributions of securities other than ADSs, and annual service fees. As a result, shareholders who exchange Class A ordinary shares into ADSs, and vice versa, may not achieve the level of economic return the shareholders may anticipate.

We may be subject to securities litigation, which is expensive and could divert management attention.

Companies that have experienced volatility in the volume and market price of their shares have been subject to an increased incidence of securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, and, if adversely determined, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Item 4. INFORMATION ON THE COMPANY

A. History and Development of the Company

In late 2010, our founder, Mr. Yuan Zhou, founded Zhihu. Between 2010 and 2012, Zhihu was a by-invitation-only Q& A community. Zhihu opened up registration to the general public in 2013 and has since grown into one of the largest comprehensive online content communities in China. We started to offer online advertising in 2016, introduced paid content in 2018, started our paid Yan Selection membership program in the first half of 2019, and we formally launched our content-commerce solutions in early 2020. We have continued to expand our content-centric monetization channels since 2020, including offering vocational training. At the beginning of 2023, we optimized our organizational structure by combining our advertising and content commerce solutions services into a “marketing services” business, offering our merchants and brands more effective and comprehensive marketing solutions.

We established Zhihu Technology Limited under