Heytea founder Neo Nie Yunchen made cheese-topped tea cool – today the 30-year-old millennial entrepreneur has 450 stores and a US$600 million net worth
In less than a decade, Nie Yunchen has managed to grow Chinese milk tea brand Heytea into a business with over 450 stores in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Today, the 30-year-old brand founder – who also goes by the English name Neo – has a net worth of 4 billion yuan (US$616 million). His journey to this point has not always been a smooth one, however.
How did Nie do it?
Born in 1991, Nie is from Jiangxi province in southeastern China, though his family moved to Guangdong while he was still young. According to China’s Sina.com, Nie’s college entrance exam grades were not great and he could only apply to a vocational school. After graduating, he opened his own mobile phone repair shop in Jiangmen city. Due to its remote location, Nie did not attract many customers and then, from 2011, came the rapid rise of online shopping platforms that further thwarted his commercial opportunities. Nie’s repair business became increasingly difficult to run, and eventually he closed it, Sina reported.
In a profile of him by Sohu.com, Nie said he was lost and that the idea of starting his own business struck him while he was drinking milk tea made with milk powder; he was amused by people queuing for the drink and wondered how people would react if it was made from fresh milk instead.
By October 2012, Nie had developed a creative drink with fresh milk, fruit, tea and cheese. His hard work paid off as people were soon lining up for hours just to get a taste of his original beverage. Within three years, Nie was the owner of 50 Heytea outlets.
In 2016, Nie received a 100 million yuan (US$15.4 million) investment from IDG Capital and venture capitalist He Boquan. Then in 2018, Meituan invested 400 million yuan (US$61.6 million) in Heytea. The story circulating on Chinese social media goes that Meituan’s CEO Wang Xing told his assistant to get him Heytea milk tea, and the assistant came back saying, “Here’s the Heytea milk tea, costing 400 million yuan”.
In 2019, Nie was listed in Forbes’ “30 Under 30 Asia” list.
In an interview he did with 21CBR, Nie says he is often anxious, as he realises there is so much for him to improve and work on: “I spend most of my time thinking about what new things we can bring to consumers, and most new products, like Heytea Go [an app], come from these thinking processes.”
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- After watching in disbelief as youngsters queued up for tea made with substandard powdered milk, Nie established his first milk tea shop in Jiangmen in 2012
- After chunks of investment from IDG Capital, investor He Boquan and Meituan, Nie was propelled onto Forbes’ ‘30 Under 30 Asia’ list – and banked a tidy fortune