For the past decade, Zhaohui ‘Jeffrey’ Li has been a managing partner at Tencent Investment and a general manager at Tencent M&A, subsidiaries of the largest internet company dominating China’s artificial intelligence (AI), enterprise, automotive and security industries.
Tencent Investment has made over 800 investments encompassing consumer, education, financial, gaming and social media technologies. In 2020, the unit had taken part in some 170 rounds in excess of RMB249.5m ($38m) combined, according to financial data aggregator ITJuzi, which would make it one of its most active years.
Li was quoted as saying in a WeChat statement last year: “In the post-covid-19 era, consumer psychology and behaviour will see great change.”
He told Tencent in April 2020 that the pandemic was different from the 1997 Asian financial turmoil and the 2008 global financial crisis. “The current market is still relatively stable, and the global economic liquidity is still within a reasonable range,” he said.
In the post-pandemic era, China’s economic growth drivers are likely to shift from an export-oriented model to a domestic-demand approach, thereby stimulating the overall upgrade of the industrial chain, Li said. Among them, Chinese consumer brands have become an important trend driving economic growth.
In addition, digital transformation will become a new trend in all walks of life, according to Li, who added that enterprise services would be a new focus. “In the US, to-business investments account for half of VC and PE deals; while in China, they are only a small portion compared with to-C ones.”
Regarding corporate venture capital (CVC) activities in the country, Li said at CYZone’s 2020 Demo China online event: “China’s CVC has taken a different path from the United States. For instance, it has helped build a completely different ecosystem through minority equity investments and industrial chain construction. CVC also cooperates with traditional VCs and PEs to expand the market together – instead of competing with each other for limited resources and playing zero-sum games.”
In 2021, Tencent backed financial software developer Tengyin Caizhi, industrial digitalisation service Youye Technology (through its Tencent Cloud unit), gene-sequencing technology developer Vision Medicals and online training platform developer Yunxuetang.
Medical device developer Raysight Medica, community buying platform developer Xingsheng Youxuan and artificial intelligence chip developer Enflame Technology were also among this year’s investments.
Li joined Tencent in 2011 and launched and led Tencent Investment’s efforts to penetrate key O2O sectors, including automotive, education and healthcare. He was responsible for Tencent’s investments in Huayi Brothers, Zhihu, Netmarble Games, Howbuy and many others around the world.
Prior to joining Tencent, Li worked as an investment principal at Germany-based publisher Bertelsmann’s Asian corporate venturing unit run by Annabelle Long for two years.
Before that, Li worked for Google and Nokia in various product and business roles, where he gained substantial experience in the internet and mobile arenas. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Peking University and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.