The Top 10: #6 Chris (Haiyang) Yu, managing director of Tencent Investment
Chris (Haiyang) Yu has been working at Tencent Investment, internet group Tencent’s corporate venture capital (CVC) unit, since 2011. Currently, he holds the managing director role where he is in charge of social networking, education, real estate, tourism, games and pan-entertainment investments.
He said: “In the past few years, internet and high-tech have developed rapidly. Investing on behalf of Tencent, a leading internet company, I can lead and participate in some investment deals that change people’s lives and promote social development. This is the most attractive aspect for me.”
Yu gave a few examples to illustrate his success, saying: “One is China-based short video-streaming social media app Kuaishou. When I first led this investment in March 2017, we led a $275m funding round after which it was valued at $2.75bn. Subsequent to the most recent funding round, Kuaishou was valued at $28bn and there are now more than 300 million daily users who share and view videos on this platform. On average, each daily active user spends more than 60 minutes on the app.
“Another is online education platform developer Yuanfudao. When I first became involved in the [$40m May 2016] investment, the company had not started online tutoring. [After Tencent led a $300m round in December 2018], the company is providing online teaching services to more than 4 million students located in various places in China, including developed cities and remote areas.
“In addition, I was behind medical crowdfunding platform Shuidi’s [RMB50m April 2017] angel round. As of June 2019, more than 250 million people have made 650 million times of donations on the platform. Currently, there are more than 100 million paying members who are on the platform’s mutual insurance plan.
“Finally, I executed accommodation rental services platform operator Ziroom’s [RMB4bn ($621m) January 2018] series A round. In 2019, the company is operating more than 1.2 million rooms, and millions of users have stayed at Ziroom’s long-rent apartments.”
Before joining Tencent, Yu had four years of early-stage investment and analysis experience at venture capital firms China Growth Capital and WI Harper. He has a civil engineering degree from Tsinghua University.
