In September the CEO and founder of Paris-based Viadeo - the world's second most popular professional networking site (after LinkedIn) - left Silicon Valley, where he'd just moved to, and settled in Beijing. It was time, Dan Saferty decided, to reap the rewards of an investment he'd made in 2008 when he'd bought Tianji, the Chinese market leader.

"I asked him to move here" recalls his friend Derek Ling, Tianji's CEO. "I could see signs that the market was ready and it was really important for Dan to be here and feel it." Since 2009, China had become Viadeo's number-one market, overtaking France. Considering the number of internet users in China - 430 million - and its growth potential, Saferty's decision to relocate didn't require that much thought.

The professional social networking market is finally taking off in China, where it lags about five years behind the US. Viadeo estimates its current potential at 85 millions users. "If you add on the six million new graduates per year, it should grow at roughly 15% a year in the near term," says Saferty.

Currently Tianji leads the market with eight million registered users, most of whom are CEOs or young graduates.

Saferty expects as many as 35 million in 2013. Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn trails behind with a million - although, to be fair, it is periodically blocked in China, depending on how paranoid the government is.

The company gains an extra 380,000 users per month and hopes to reach the one million threshold by mid-2012. "We now have a big enough user base to start making money", says Saferty, who aims to generate 10% of his revenue from China by the end of 2012. The model will be similar to Europe's, with sales coming from both advertising and recruiters. Access will remain free, and in the medium term he hopes to monetise Tianji by introducing pay-as-you-go functions.

Since September, Saferty has doubled the workforce in the Beijing office and now intends to concentrate on sales and marketing, adding 10-15 new recruits a month in the coming year.

One reason the company is expanding so fast is to stay ahead of the competition. There are 30 or so websites for China's professional classes and maintaining the lead won't be easy. Indeed, Ushi, which lags far behind with 500,000 users, openly covets the number-one spot. "The market is for us to lose", says Ling, pointing out that the main challenge remains attracting and retaining top talent.

However, at least it won't have to face LinkedIn, which has no offices in China and no plans to open any. Other big US players such as Google, Yahoo! and eBay have no significant market share in China either. What's remarkable about Viadeo is that it not only managed to enter the market, but to dominate it too - and by the looks of things, will continue to do so.

The reason it has been allowed to stay is that the Chinese site complies with the country's strict censorship rules, a compromise that comes at a cost. To avoid Chinese interference on the main Viadeo platform, Saferty keeps it separate from the rest. Unlike his sites around the globe, where all members can communicate, Tianji ringfences its users.

According to Saferty, the main reason for the company's success in China is its core philosophy. "We don't believe in a one-size-fits-all policy," he says. From the beginning he has adopted what he calls a "multilocal" approach, keeping the management and local workforce in place, something other international web companies have not done.

The approach dates back to 2008, when Saferty set out to find a Chinese partner. He approached Ling and, instead of simply offering to buy his company, proposed a share-swap deal as an incentive. Saferty does not speak Chinese and most of his staff don't speak English, let alone French. "But at least they know and understand the market," he says.

It's a strategy that he has adopted worldwide, on the assumption that the only way to gain a significant share of this market is to go to non-English-speaking countries where LinkedIn has not. In 2009, Viadeo bought Apnacircle.com, the number-one player in India, and Unyk in Brazil. "We buy not only initial members and an operating platform, but also a real cultural know-how," adds Saferty, who refers to his company as "the number-one professional networking platform outside English-speaking markets". In exchange, Viadeo offers its expertise, global reach and financing tools in markets where finding investors can be a challenge.

The company is now present on every continent, attempting in each instance to build up a substantial user base and then monetise its sites. Both the Brazilian and Indian platforms are expected to start generating revenue in 2013.

In November, Viadeo opened offices in Dakar and Casablanca to tap into French-speaking Africa. However, its most recent foray into emerging markets is in Russia ("a very local market similar to China's"), where it has just set up a 50/50 joint venture with Sanoma Independent Media. As with Tianji, management will remain local, and Viadeo hopes to lead the market with Sanoma's RB platform. It aims to have two million users next year.

Viadeo is reaching out to 40 million users, and Saferty is targeting 100 million subscribers by 2013. But compared with LinkedIn's current 120 million, the numbers are small. "We are not even looking at penetrating the UK, the US or northern Europe," Saferty admits. In

India and Brazil, the two are competing head-on - and after raising $350m in a very successful IPO last summer, LinkedIn has no intention of leaving the developing markets to Viadeo. In the second quarter, the US giant posted net profits of $4.5m and saw sales double to $120m. With ample funds to back its expansion plans, it recently announced that it will open an R&D centre in India - its second-biggest market after the US.

Saferty's company has been profitable for two years and since 2006 has raised $20m for acquisitions overseas. Although he does not reveal revenue or profit figures, he does plan to go public some time in the next 12-24 months, but does not know where. The location of the IPO will depend on market conditions and investor interest. But the relatively small framework of his company enables him to remain flexible, as his globe-hopping demonstrates.

Keeping up with the online recruiting market, which evolves fast, remains a challenge. Viadeo has just opened its platform for other developers to build on and expects third-party revenue to grow rapidly in the years to come.

"We hope to become a business tool that professionals cannot live without," says Saferty. His problem is that LinkedIn has exactly the same goal.

Dan the man

A graduate of French business school HEC, Dan Saferty set up his first entrepreneurial venture at the age of 23 with DIMO, a company in the tourism sector. In 1992 he co-founded a business specialising in the distribution of textile products from Asia, which he sold in 1999.

His links to professional networking go back to 2000, when he created a club for entrepreneurs that aggregated and valued private company shares to fund the expansion of member companies. From that platform, the idea of creating a network where members could share their contacts and data online gradually emerged.

Saferty launched Viadeo.com in 2004. In 2006, 2007 and 2009, the company successfully held funding rounds. A third of its capital remains in the hands of the founders and managers, another third has been handed out to the firms that Viadeo has acquired and the rest belongs to what Saferty calls his "business angles" (sic).