Two years ago, Zhou Yahui resigned as the general manager of Kunlun Wanwei, and personally led Opera to land on NASDAQ. After resigning two years later, where will he lead Opay and how will he ride in the African market?
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “Investment World” (ID: pedaily2012) < / a>, author: Zhou Jiali.
“Unicorn Excavator” Zhou Yahui decided to leave Kunlun Wanwei.
It is reported that on April 13, Kunlun Wanwei issued an announcement that the board of directors recently received a written resignation report from chairman Zhou Yahui’s resignation.
The announcement stated that the reason for Zhou Yahui’s resignation was that due to the rapid spread of the new crown epidemic in Africa, it brought great challenges and opportunities to Zhou Yahui’s entrepreneurial project, OPay, one of Africa’s largest mobile payment companies. As a full-time CEO of Opay, Zhou Yahui needs to invest more time and energy in Africa and OPay, so he applied to the board of directors to resign as chairman of the company.
As a matter of fact, Zhou Yahui has been continuously reducing the company’s stock since last year. Zhou Yahui handled part of the stock held by the company for stock pledged repurchase transactions, and released 46.15 million shares, accounting for 28.62% of the shares he held and 3.99% of the company’s total share capital.
Since the listing of Kunlun Wanwei on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s Growth Enterprise Market, its investment business has once become its profit pillar, and Zhou Yahui’s weight cannot be ignored. Statistics show that Zhou Yahui and Kunlun Wanwei invested more than 7 billion US dollars. But his investment secrets are secret, and everybody will say: “No way, luck is good.”
From Fun Store and Yingke to Ruhan Holdings and Opera, the 43-year-old Zhou Yahui will also create several listing myths?
The Myth of “Investing in Rookie”: 5 unicorns were cast in 1 year, 3 times in 2 years Ring the bell
It took Zhou Yahui only one year to successfully transform investors from a “listed company local tyrant”.
In 2015, Zhou Yahui finally fulfilled his wish to bring Kunlun Wanwei to the market, with a total value of tens of billions. He decided to test the investment by investing in water. At that time, he evaluated himself as an “investment rookie.”
In Zhou Yahui ’s investment notes, he once wrote: I do n’t even know the most basic common terms in the investment field, includingIncluding words like PRO rata, Veto CB. So I will pay special attention to the English words that VCs pop up from time to time, and then come down weakly to ask people How to spell, and then search for vocabulary notes.
Fun installment (the predecessor of “Fun Shop”) is the biggest project after his water test investment. Even three days before the signing of the agreement, he temporarily increased the price by 10 million yuan, with a total of 120 million US dollars. In October 2017, the fun store was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its market value exceeded 10 billion US dollars that day, Zhou Yahui was a god of war.
During this period, he also successfully bet on star projects such as Mutian, Dada, Yingke, and Quick Manga, and turned into a unicorn excavator. Among them, Yingke was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in July 2018, and its market value exceeded 10 billion Hong Kong dollars that day. Everyone sighed for their ability to hunt unicorns. He once said: “To dig unicorns, it is more important to become a unicorn incubator.”
As Zhou Yahui outlined his investment landscape, Kunlun Wanwei was also transforming into an international Internet company through a series of acquisitions. For Zhou Yahui, this is a good opportunity, so he will take the African browser product Opera and the gay community Grindr that have long been sighted.
After the Opera was included in the package, Zhou Yahui invested $ 152 million in Kunlun Group to acquire Grindr. Kunlun Wanwei’s semi-annual and annual reports have analyzed Opera as an important fulcrum of their overseas strategy. Zhou Yahui once emphasized: “I must seize these two opportunities.” He hopes to make Opera the headline of the United States today, and Grindr will bring a large number of users.
Zhou Yahui regards investment as entrepreneurship, which is stimulating, enjoyable, and fulfilling for him. After the acquisition of Opera, Zhou Yahui regarded Opera as a second venture, personally as CEO, and made a comeback of the company culture. For Opera, he even resigned as the general manager of Kunlun Wanwei.
On July 27, 2018, Opera was listed on NASDAQ in the United States, with a market value of about 1.4 billion US dollars on that day. Zhou Yahui accounted for 67.5% of the shares, and the price soared 6.5 billion yuan.
Zhou Yahui once said that life is short and there are not enough funds to participate in the entrepreneurship of 100 companies. The best way to learn is to invest in 100 companies and start a business with 100 companies. It may not be as successful as investing in 100 companies.
The former interesting store, followed by Yingke and Opera, Zhou Yahui struck the bell three times in the past two years, and his investment transcript was added with a strong stroke.
The next Internet war, go to Africa!
Even though the investment landscape is star-studded, Zhou Yahui still thinks he isNot a real investor, he still started a business and worked 85% of the time. This time, he decided to join the African market to capture the next unicorn.
Actually, after taking over Opera, Zhou Yahui has set his sights on the African mobile internet market and launched a personalized news push service platform based on artificial intelligence in 2017. In 2018, a mobile payment company focused on the African market was incubated Opay also launched a shared travel application and takeaway express application.
It is similar to the resignation of the general manager of Kunlun Wanwei for Opera. Zhou Yahui is still willing to give up the position of chairman for his entrepreneurial projects and go deep into the African market.
He believes that mobile Internet infrastructure has developed rapidly in the past decade. However, the penetration rate of Internet and smartphones in Africa is still lagging behind, which is the “blue ocean” for the development of mobile Internet.
The data shows that OPay is a mobile payment service provider and travel service provider in Nigeria. It was incubated by Opera of Kunlun Wanwei, which can meet users’ mobile payment, shared travel, and food delivery needs.
Last year, OPay completed two financings. In June 2019, OPay received US $ 50 million in Series A financing; in November of the same year, OPay received another US $ 120 million in Series B financing. Investment institutions include Meituan Dianping, Dragon Ball Capital (Meituan), Gao Rong Capital, Source Code SoftBank Asia, BAI (Betasman Asia Investment Fund), Red Dot Ventures, IDG Capital, Sequoia China and Jinshajiang Ventures.
At the same time, OPay’s data disclosed during the Series B financing show that since June last year, the number of its active agent accounts has tripled to more than 140,000, and the daily transaction volume has reached an average of more than 10 million US dollars per day.
As for the topic of “starting business overseas”, Zhou Yahui has repeatedly encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to go to Africa in public speeches. Great success, this probability of success is quite large, so I actively encourage everyone to start a business in Africa. ”
But he emphasized that enterprises going to Africa for development do not go to “dig gold mines”, but go to “growing grain”, which requires “four-year farming” before they can have a harvest.
Two years ago, Zhou Yahui resigned as the general manager of Kunlun Wanwei and personally led Opera to land on NASDAQ. Now that he resigns again, where will he lead Opay? How will it ride in the African market?
Edit | Yun Xi @ 出海
Picture | Pexels
