Evolving for the Next Billion

For our last episode in this special year, we bring you Hans's perspective on 2020. To our listeners across the world, thank you for being with us. We look forward to bringing you more insights and inspirations next year! See you in 2021!

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2020 will be one for the history books. In this 3-part series, we sit down with GGV Capital's managing partners to get their take on memorable moments of 2020, new habits developed during lockdown and their hopes for 2021. First guest for today is Jixun Foo.

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Today on the show, we have Son Tran, founder, and CEO of Tiki. Tiki (short for "Tìm kiếm & Tiết kiệm", which means "Search & Save") is a top all-in-one commerce platform in Vietnam, including an e-commerce marketplace, TikiNOW Smart Logistics - an integrated supply chain platform, and Tiki Trading, a retail subsidiary.

Starting Tiki as an online bookstore in 2010, Son has turned Tiki into a top trusted multi-selection e-commerce platform for millions of Vietnamese customers. He held a double degree in software engineering and commerce in Vietnam and Australia. After graduating with a Master's degree at the University of New South Wales (Australia) in 2007. Before Tiki, Son also helped starting Clip.vn - a.k.a YouTube of Vietnam.

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For the last episode of our EdTech series, we have GGV managing partner Jenny Lee. Jenny has been investing in the space for almost a decade now. So we thought a conversation with her would be the best way to conclude this series. If you or your friend is in the EdTech space, this is an episode that you don't want to miss.

Jenny shared how she started to invest in EdTech, getting to a product-market fit, growth with different business models, and one big bet she is currently making in the space.

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Today on the show we have Mark Luo. Mark Luo is the founder and CEO of Huohua Siwei (Spark Education). It is a learning app that develops logical thinking, concentration, and other cognitive skills for children aged between 3-12. It offers small live classes in the form of interactive games, with real time guidance from a teacher. The company currently has over 280,000 paid students and boasts a referral rate of 80%. Huohua Siwei is a GGV portfolio company.

Mark has extensive entrepreneurial experience. Before Spark, he was part of the founding team at China's earliest classified website Ganji.com and served as the CTO. The company was acquired by 58.com in 2015 with 2.6 billion USD. Mark graduated from Singapore National University with master's degree in computer science.

We also talked to GGV managing partner Jenny Lee on why she led our investment into Huohua.

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Making learning fun is hard, especially in this day and age where you have to compete with social media and games for students' attention. What's even harder is to do so and get a better learning outcome. The hardest is to make it into a scalable business.

This is what Michael and his co-founder Mads are trying to do with their startup Labster, a leading virtual science lab provider based in Copenhagen. Their vision is to radically improve science education so future scientists can solve big problems that we cannot solve.

The startup world is never short of grand vision like this. What's rare is the passion and patience to follow through, which you will hear from Michael's story in this episode. You will also hear Hans and Michael discuss the role Covid played in the company's growth, why science education is actually a global challenge, and what separates a platform business from a content one.

Labster is GGV's first investment in Europe. The deal happened during Covid-19 entirely online. Jenny and Hans led GGV's investment into the company.

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For the first episode of our EdTech series, you will be hearing from the founder of Zuoyebang Hou Jianbin, whose personal belief about education significantly shaped the way he built this company. Born and raised in a small town in China, He was a straight-A student and had his life completely changed by the national college entrance exam. Got into China's top university and a job offer from China's search engine giant Baidu, where he built the product that eventually became one of the world's most valued EdTech startups. Zuoyebang was spun off from Baidu in 2015.

For the second part of this episode, you will also be hearing from GGV managing partner Jenny Lee. Jenny led GGV's investment into Zuoyebang in 2016. She shared what made Zuoyebang stood out among all the photo search apps that were out there, and what keeps Zuoyebang competitive as Covid-19 pushed a lot of new capital flowing into the market.

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2020 is a defining year for many of us. This is a year when 85% of the countries in the world mandated school closure, leaving 1.5 billion students out of school. A year when valuation of EdTech companies are at record high with new money continuously flowing into it. For the EdTech founders, it is the opportunity of a lifetime, also an ultimate stress test for their companies.

As a global fund with a handful of EdTech portfolios across the world, we created this special series for EdTech founders to share their stories.

Also included in this series is a chat with GGV Partner Jenny Lee on why she first decided to go into EdTech back in 2013 despite all the skepticism, key things she looks for, and what excites her most about the future of learning.

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Today on the show, we have Peter De Caluwe, the Executive Chairman and CEO of Thunes. Thunes is a B2B cross-border payments network for emerging markets. It provides transfer of funds between payment systems, including mobile wallet providers, money transfer operators and banks, in more than 100 countries and 60 currencies. We recorded this interview a while back, the company recently announced its $60 million Series B, which GGV Capital also participated as an existing investor.

With more than 25 years of experience in FinTech, Peter is a specialist in electronic payments, e-commerce, credit cards in emerging markets. He was previously the CEO of Ogone, Naspers Payments and PayU. Having graduated with a Bachelor's in Marketing from Group T Leuven, a Belgium-based college, he has risen through the ranks to become a serial entrepreneur and investor.

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Interviewed by Hans Tung and Madhu Yalamarthi.

On today's episode, we have Siddharth Shah, co-founder and CEO of PharmEasy, India's largest digital health platform. Start with a vision to make health care accessible and affordable to all farmers who supplies medicines to more than 1000 cities and towns in India. The company recently proposed a merger deal with its rival MedLife, creating now India's newest unicorn.

Siddharth is focused on bringing radical reforms in the healthcare industry with the help of digital technologies. A graduated from DJ Sanghavi College in Mumbai in computer engineering, and he is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/engage