By Joanne Chiu

Kuaishou Technology has its eyes on the world's biggest initial public offering in more than a year, seeking to raise about $5 billion from a Hong Kong share sale as short-video and live-streaming apps surge in popularity in China.

Kuaishou--which competes with ByteDance Ltd., the rival Chinese company behind TikTok and its sister app Douyin--started taking investor orders Monday. With the offering, which could value it at more than $60 billion, Kuaishou is joining a string of tech companies from China that have listed in Hong Kong.

Kuaishou, which means "fast hand" in Chinese, is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. It was co-founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, software engineers who previously worked for Google China and Hewlett Packard, respectively.

Both Kuaishou and ByteDance have capitalized on growing demand from younger Chinese people to watch and record short videos on their smartphones. Its namesake short-video platform is the world's second-largest, according to data cited in its prospectus, and there were 305 million average daily active users of its apps and mini-programs in China for the nine months as of September.

With a minimum deal size of $4.95 billion, the IPO would be the largest in the world since late 2019, when state-controlled Saudi Arabian Oil Co., commonly known as Aramco, raised $29.4 billion, Dealogic figures show.

At the top of the range, the deal implies a market capitalization of $60.9 billion, showing how Kuaishou's valuation has risen rapidly. It was valued at $28.6 billion last February after obtaining $3 billion in funding from a Tencent-led consortium, according to PitchBook, a data provider. In total, the company has raised more than $4 billion in multiple funding rounds, PitchBook data shows.

Kuaishou takes a more democratic approach than rival services, saying its systems deliberately show users a broader range of videos, rather than just content from star creators. Its prospectus says that nearly 40% of videos get more than 100 views and that its co-founder, Mr. Cheng, believes Kuaishou should be somewhere that "champions ordinary people."

Still, the listing document also highlights a few creators who have achieved widespread popularity, including a young inventor who goes by "Hopeless Edison," a couple farming cordyceps fungi in Sichuan province, and a British professor based in Beijing who performs chemistry experiments online.

The company is selling 365.2 million new shares at an indicative range of 105 to 115 Hong Kong dollars, according to a term sheet seen by The Wall Street Journal. It plans to fix the offer price on Jan. 29.

The offering size could increase to up to $6.2 billion if underwriting banks exercise an option to sell 15% more shares.

Kuaishou has secured 10 cornerstone investors, including Capital Group, Temasek, BlackRock Inc., Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Boyu Capital. They agreed to buy a combined $2.45 billion worth of the stock wherever the deal prices.

Units of Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp. and China Renaissance Holdings Ltd. are acting as joint sponsors for the deal.

Write to Joanne Chiu at joanne.chiu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

01-24-21 2329ET