A number of people in the investment circle confirmed to 36Kr Holdings that Meituan Dragon Ball Capital (hereinafter referred to as Meituan Dragon Ball) is about to usher in a new partner: Yu Hong, Executive Director of GGV Capital, former GGV. She will also hold the post of vice president of Meituan and join the Meituan Dragon Ball Investment Committee (IC). The other three members of the investment committee are Wang Xing, Chen Shaohui and Zhu Yonghua.

Prior to this, Yu Hong had more than 10 years of investment experience. In 2010, Yu Hong, a graduate of Zhejiang University, first joined China Renaissance Holdings Ltd.. Cut into the investment industry from FA, and then completed "more than 300 million US dollars in private equity and M & A projects" in e-commerce, education and other fields. In 2013, after Yu Hong joined GGV, she also expanded track investment in logistics and medical care in addition to the original fields. star cases include: homework gang, Kujiale, Musical.ly, Full Truck Alliance Co. Ltd. Group, Spark thinking, etc., and many unicorns, and then promoted to executive director. It is worth mentioning that in the GGV hierarchy, executive directors are second only to managing partners (excluding relatively alienated "investment partners").

The personal investments of Meituan Longzhu, Meituan War Investment and Wang Xing can be understood as the "troika" of the man at the helm of this nearly $250 billion super ship. Since its establishment in December 2017, Meituan Dragon Ball has invested in many large consumer enterprises, such as Xi Tea, Ancient Tea, Friendship fresh Food, Lehe Food, Meat Union, Yi Jiu Pai, etc., centering on three directions: new catering, new retail and local life services, focusing on the growth stage. In August 2019, Meituan Dragonball invested in round C, Li Auto Inc., which also became its first IPO project.

However, as the most external capital hunter of the three, Dragon Ball has long been considered to be close to Meituan's War Investment Department, and even called "Meituan War Investment II" by some people.

With seven years of investment experience in established dollar funds, what changes will Yu Hong bring to it?

Dragon Ball to Meituan

Meituan Dragon Ball has an innate industrial background.

In February 2017, Meituan announced that he would set up Meituan Dianping Industrial Fund as a cornerstone investor, the predecessor of Meituan Dragon Ball, with a target of 3 billion yuan and a down payment of 1.5 billion yuan. Its first fund in addition to Meituan, but also attracted Tencent, New Hope and other enterprises and professional parent funds.

At the beginning of the "industrial positioning" is very clear: focus on large consumption, the project is concentrated before the C round. Its later star cases are also well-known offline consumer brand chains, such as Happy Tea, Ancient Tea, Happy West Cake, and the popular Honey Snow and Ice City, and so on.

It's not hard to explain why the first founding partner Meituan recruited for Dragonball was Zhu Yonghua. Zhu Yonghua has worked in Tiantu Capital, which has a prominent consumer label for many years, and has participated in and led the investment in Zhou's Black Duck, Ciming physical examination, Tangcheng Chef, Baylor English, Beauty Island, Cool Mansion and other companies. He was the first partner in Tiantu to be trained as an intern.

According to 36Kr Holdings's understanding, Shi Pengfei, senior director of Meituan Longzhu, had previously worked in Tiantu.

At the investment committee of Meituan Dragon Ball, in addition to Zhu Yonghua, there were also Wang Xing and Chen Shaohui. With the title of Meituan Dragon Ball CEO, Chen Shaohui is better known as Meituan CFO, the senior vice president in charge of strategy and investment, that is, "the person who helps Wang Xing spend money." Within Meituan, he is a key figure equivalent to BABA, Cai Chongxin, Tencent and Liu Chiping.

After Meituan Longzhu raised 4 billion yuan in October 2017, Wang Xing decided to make the scale larger, "due to the imbalance between market demand and investor demand, the scale increased from the original US $3 billion to US $5 billion. Around the large consumer industry, absorbing 70% of external LP, industrial capital has also become a capital lever for Wang Xing, meeting multiple purposes such as building ecology, deeply ploughing industries, and obtaining returns.

Since then, the industrial fund has been renamed Meituan Dragon Ball, which is also named by Wang Xing himself. Dragon Ball means that "many elements can be realized only after having many elements", which implies that the new Internet boss hopes it can become a "necessary element" for innovative companies in the consumer industry chain.

Wang Xing attaches great importance to this dragon ball. A person close to Meituan Dragon Ball told 36Kr Holdings that Wang Xing would personally take a look at the project recommended by the Investment Committee, which was "GP in the real sense."

The Meituan Dragon Ball Investment Committee composed of Wang Xing, Chen Shaohui and Zhu Yonghua has brought a direct result: compared with Meituan, the positioning of Dragon Ball makes the industry feel vague. Although it is the "industrial fund under Meituan", the slogan "the vision of war investment, the mechanism of financial investment", and the public positioning of insiders is VC, their understanding of it has always been closer to Meituan's "War Investment II."

Compared with Shunwei to XIAOMI and mountain hiking to cars, the relationship between Dragon Ball and Meituan does not seem to be entirely comparable (of course, Lei Jun and Yang Haoyong are also key GP of the two funds). In addition to a considerable part of Shunwei's investment is carried out around XIAOMI, there are indeed many investment directions that seem to have nothing to do with XIAOMI, which is a collaborative and independent "brotherly relationship". As indicated by the "Industrial Fund" in the original name, Meituan has higher requirements for strategic coordination of Dragonball.

36Kr Holdings learned that the two teams of Longzhu and Meituan War Investment Department work together, and some of the personnel also overlap.

There are differences. Meituan War Investment has a broader investment direction and unlimited rounds-after Meituan's comments completed the merger in October 2015, Meituan's war investment coverage gradually expanded on the basis of local life, and mostly single investment or leading investment strategy. 2018 is the high point of Meituan's battle shot, and since then it has completed a number of mergers and acquisitions, such as mobike, screen core technology, different Hongyun PMS and so on.

One more word here, from the perspective of Wang Xing's capital layout, his personal investment, Meituan investment and Meituan Dragon Ball are comparable to the "troika". For example, Li Auto Inc., the first IPO project since the Dragon Ball was founded, was invested by Wang Xing with his family office, Meituan and Meituan at the same time.

When it comes to Meituan Dragon Ball, it is precisely because of its stronger strategic synergy attribute that more than one investor once told 36Kr Holdings that when peers and entrepreneurs choose whether to accept the investment of Meituan Dragon Ball, which is "theoretically more independent", there will also be concerns such as "what is Meituan's intention" and "whether Meituan, who has no boundary, will finish casting and do it".

Before it can become the dragon ball that summons the dragon, it must first prove that it is not a devouring dragon.

Change or stay the same?

Can the addition of Yu Hong bring changes to Meituan's Dragon Ball?

Perhaps the most important thing is to integrate. At the end of 2020, Shi Pengfei, senior director of Meituan Dragon Ball, had such a public voice: he had recruited a lot of people to do VC inside, and most of them had left. "Today, many of the people left behind are people from secondary market backgrounds and industrial backgrounds, and these people have a higher retention rate. "

From the perspective of financial investors, industrial capital has been paid more and more attention and recognized in recent years. This is related to the general environment of investment in the primary market in recent years. As the head effect tends to be extreme and excellent assets are extremely scarce, for good companies, the competition among investment institutions has changed from a "competition of judgment" to a "competition of resources". Some people have concluded that the future is the era of industrial capital.

Nevertheless, it is not difficult to find that the mutual choice between Meituan Dragon Ball and Yu Hong is still based on each other's needs. Yu Hong's experience in investing in Full Truck Alliance Co. Ltd. Group, homework gang and other companies can effectively make up for the lack of perspective of Meituan Dragon Ball in logistics, science and technology Internet, and the natural industrial depth of Meituan Dragon Ball can also become an important cornerstone of investment after the Red Sun.

Compare Meituan's two current partners in charge of investment: in terms of style, Yu Hong is more financial, while Zhu Yonghua is more industrial; in terms of field, Yu Hong dabbles in education, science and technology, logistics, and going to sea, while Zhu Yonghua is famous for big consumption. Such a complementary investor portfolio sends multiple signals: on the one hand, Meituan Dragon Ball may increase the layout of the investment track; on the other hand, it can also dilute the strategic attributes and increase the elements of financial investment to a certain extent.

36Kr Holdings learned that on March 19th it was Yu Hong's last day of her former employer. At present, the official website of GGV has removed her relevant information. In the future, Meituan Dragon Ball in the specific investment level will be parallel by Zhu Yonghua and Yu Hong, the former focusing on consumer race track, the latter focus on logistics and technology Internet.

Judging from the investment style presented by the Internet giants, BABA, who is more strategic, and Tencent, who is more financial, are located at the two poles of the war investment style. And the small giants-- not only Meituan, but also byte beating, Bilibili Inc., DiDi Global Inc. and so on, although the investment is active, they are still in the exploratory period and have not yet formed an effective and formed style of play.

Does Wang Xing attract new talents from established dollar funds this time, does it mean that Meituan Dragon Ball intends to strengthen its financial investment attribute?

For Chen Shaohui, there is actually a detail that has been ignored by many people: he joined Tencent's investment in 2011-a year of concentrated reflection within Tencent after the "3Q War". Tencent established the transformation strategy of "opening up and sharing" here and set up an industry win-win fund. From then on, Tencent regarded "capital" as the same important core competence as "flow" and began the investment era of "strategic investors who are most like financial investors".

Of course, Tencent's financial investment style is related to its flow business and potential synergy with a large number of companies. But as Meituan gradually becomes the infrastructure of the consumer sector, building a healthier industrial ecosystem through capital may also become an option beyond the boundaries of unlimited expansion.

Some FA people told 36Kr Holdings that Meituan Dragon Ball focused on the consumer industry in a narrow sense is only temporary, in the long run, or to take a comprehensive VC route. Industrial depth will not have the upper hand in power for a long time, but will eventually become the basis of ecological empowerment.

In fact, as early as the beginning of the establishment of Meituan Dragon Ball, Wang Xing said that the establishment of Meituan Dragon Ball "marks Meituan entering a new stage." Adhering to the corporate mission of making everyone "eat better and live better", Meituan needs to assume more responsibility for the industry and has an "open mind and diverse ways".

Perhaps the foreshadowing of the transformation of Meituan's Dragon Ball has been buried as early as the beginning.