9/9 TBC Insider Digest
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Insider Digest 9/9/21: Posts from the Community, The New Beijing Stock Exchange, Keep, and Akulaku
Housekeeping / Announcements …
Back from Vacation! I hope everyone had a lovely end of summer as well, it’s the last few weeks of Q3, are you ready for Q4??
London Meetup: If you haven’t joined our Discord yet, you should! Lots of chatter, and also our first self-organized meetup in London by QuanNM! It’s at Thursday 9/16 at 6PM at The Pride of Spitalfields with dinner to follow at 7PM at Sichuan Folk. If you want to organize a meetup, please find the appropriate geo-focused channel on Discord or email me and I will help you publicize!
Institutional Investors ($100mm to deploy in Chinese equities): Please do fill out this typeform!
See you tomorrow in Voice Chat! 6AM PST / 9AM EST / 9PM Asia Time for this Friday 9/10! I know I always say this, but I promise to be starting some themed sharings soon from our members!
Posts from the Community: I’m always so excited when you guys post! And there was a bunch of activity this past week. Here are some of the excellent content:
RV Capital Half-Year Letter on China: Robert posted the 2nd half of his investor letter which detailed his thoughts on why he has increased his investment in China. A really excellent and detailed read! Not investment advice, of course!
Tencent's 2B Strategy Credit: Graham wrote on Tencent’s 2B strategy and concluded that these investments are more than national service. I certainly agree … do you?
John and Kristina both posted on content regulations … they might seem a little bizarre to you but there are backstories to most of the very specific guidelines: The Great Cleanup of Chinese Social Media Platforms & Policy Announcement: Content and Talent Management
And finally, in case you missed it, Kristina noted that The number of Chinese Internet users now exceeds 1 billion! and … 888 million people watch short videos and 638 million people tune in to watch livestreaming.
Now for some posts from me …
The New Beijing Stock Exchange
This is a summary of the CICC presentation on the New Beijing Stock Exchange that I posted in Discord (available at the bottom of the post, in Chinese).
First of all, if you are not familiar with the various Chinese exchanges, I highly suggest you listen / read Tech Buzz China Ep. 40 on the subject. We published it in March 2019 when STAR was announced. But besides STAR 科创板, there's also the New Third Board 新三板 AKA NEEQ, and the ChiNext 创业板. The new Beijing exchange is specifically to "deepen the reform of the New Third Board," so you'll find that most of the requirements are about that. In fact, you cannot list on this exchange unless you’re a top company on the NEEQ or been listed there 12 months as an “Innovation” company.
Akulaku - Chinese-founded Southeast Asia BNPL + Ecommerce + Digital Banking Platform
This is not exactly "China tech," but it is a Chinese tech company operating outside of China, and it is debatable if we will see more and more of these. (More, if you ask Richard at Grandview Capital, who I interviewed a few weeks ago for our Livecast series.) The company calls itself a fintech platform, which really means it is a BNPL with its own attached e-commerce platform that's also beginning to offer banking services. It operates in Southeast Asia (primarily Indonesia) but is expanding into Europe in 2H2021.
Keep - China's Peloton / Leading Digital Fitness Brand
Keep is the leading fitness app with its own branded hardware and apparel in China. Media like to refer to it as "China's Peloton," although I think Fiture may fight for that moniker eventually. Founded in 2014, Keep has now raised $614mm over ~7 rounds from funds such as 5Y (fka Morningside), GGV, Tencent, Goldman Sachs, Jeneration and SoftBank. Its last round of funding, which was completed at the beginning of 2021, valued it at $2Bn. It was in process to go IPO earlier this summer and was rumored to be raising $500mm but ultimately pulled the process when the Didi fiasco unfolded.
Questions & Asks
Joshua wants to know, is this headline too sensational or should we be worried? China Tells Tencent, Netease to End Focus on Profit in Gaming - Bloomberg
Welcome
Yunfei Liu - endowment investor at Amherst
That’s it! Please check the forums for amazing contributions from our members!
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