Now JD.com has become the second largest e-commerce platform in China. Together with Ali and Pinduoduo, JD.com is often referred to as the "Tencent Series", mainly because Tencent holds 527 million shares of JD.com. With a shareholding ratio of 16.95%, it is the largest shareholder of JD.com.
The "marriage" between Tencent and JD.com was a "big deal" in China's Internet industry in 2014.
At that time, Tencent was preparing to invest in JD.com and the two sides negotiated, but the teams on both sides found it difficult to accept each other’s terms, which led to a deadlock in the negotiation. If it continues like this, it may end up unhappy. This transaction is about to become "yellow".
Liu Qiangdong called Zhang Lei at that time. According to media reports, Liu Qiangdong made 7 calls to Zhang Lei at the time, which shows that the matter is still very urgent. While Zhang Lei was skiing in France at the time, Liu Qiangdong asked for help and asked Zhang Lei to return to China to promote cooperation and negotiation between Tencent and JD.
So who is Zhang Lei? Why did Liu Qiangdong call him at this critical moment?
Zhang Lei was born in Zhumadian City, Henan Province. He was playful in elementary school and had poor grades. He almost missed the entrance to junior high school. But because he had an uncle who worked in the library, Zhang Lei’s parents didn’t have time to take care of him when he was in elementary school. The library where his uncle works has given Zhang Lei access to a large number of extracurricular books, allowing him to learn more extracurricular knowledge than ordinary people. After
middle school, Zhang Lei started to catch up. In 1990, he was admitted to Renmin University as the number one in the Henan liberal arts college entrance examination. After graduation, he worked for Minmetals Corporation, and then quit his job at Minmetals and went to Yale University for advanced studies. After graduation in 2005 Founded Hillhouse Capital. After the establishment of Hillhouse Capital, Zhang Lei couldn’t find investors because he was strongly optimistic about the prospects of China’s economy and the take-off of China’s Internet industry, but when he told investors about these ideas, no one believed it. In the end, only his The mentor David Swenson believed he would succeed and invested 20 million US dollars in seed fund for Hillhouse Capital.
After Zhang Lei founded Hillhouse, his first investment was to Tencent. At that time, no one was optimistic about Tencent’s prospects, thinking that Tencent had only one QQ software. After a period of time, everyone would not feel new, but Zhang Lei saw QQ’s social networking. It will completely change the way Chinese people socialize, with unlimited potential. So the largest investment that can be invested was invested in Tencent.
Facts have proved that Zhang Lei is right. Later, Tencent continued to grow and develop, and Tencent's stock soared, and Zhang Lei received huge returns.
Zhang Lei is an investor in Tencent and an investor in JD.com. In the early days of JD.com’s development, Liu Qiangdong needed funds, and he found no results in financing. He found his "senior brother" Zhang Lei from Renmin University. Liu Qiangdong needed 75 million U.S. dollars, but Zhang Lei said: Either I don’t invest, or if I want to invest, I’ll invest three. Billion dollars.
This is because Zhang Lei agrees with Liu Qiangdong’s development ideas. Only when JD.com builds its own logistics and warehousing system can it build a "moat" for competition in the e-commerce field, and Zhang Lei knows that this needs to burn money, 75 million US dollars Obviously not enough, so he invested 300 million US dollars to Zhang Lei.
Hillhouse is both an investor in Tencent and an investor in JD.com, and both are important early investors. Zhang Lei is naturally the best link between Tencent and JD.com.
At the time, Tencent’s own e-commerce development was not ideal, while JD’s rapid development stage lacked capital and traffic access. Zhang Lei saw the benefits of the “marriage” of the two. Tencent’s biggest resource is traffic, and JD has built heavy assets. The combination of the two e-commerce models is bound to be a win-win situation, so Zhang Lei brought together Tencent and JD.com.
However, at a critical moment, the two sides refused to compromise in negotiations. Zhang Lei, who was skiing in France, returned to China the next day after receiving the call. After Zhang Lei returned to China, he immediately left the seven core personnel involved in the negotiations in the conference room. Zhang Lei said domineeringly that this business must be negotiated. If the negotiation fails today, no one can leave. After
, Zhang Lei and the seven core personnel of Tencent and JD continued to have a 4-hour meeting to discuss 35 issues one by one, and finally the two parties reached a cooperation and signed a strategic cooperation agreement.
In this way, Tencent took a stake in JD.com, and the two parties started cooperation. Tencent’s traffic portal has brought a large number of new users to JD.com, which has promoted the rapid development of JD.com. And Tencent also indirectlyThe method entered the field of e-commerce and accumulated experience. In the future, he invested in Pinduoduo and obtained huge returns.
Zhang Lei is a "great god"-level figure in the private equity industry. The Hillhouse Capital managed by Zhang Lei has exceeded 500 billion U.S. dollars and invested in Tencent, JD, Baidu, Meituan, Gree, WuXi AppTec, BeiGene , Blue Moon and more than 800 Chinese companies.
Zhang Lei has changed from an ordinary wage earner who worked at Minmetals to the "godfather" of China's private equity investment industry. His experience is legendary, not only luck, but also beliefs and values.
Of course, Zhang Lei’s success cannot be replicated, and it is difficult for us to reach his ideological level and business management ability, but Mr. Zhang Lei’s experience is worth learning. He spent several years writing his own entrepreneurial and investment experience in his new book "Value".
In this book, Zhang Lei fully shared his investment philosophy, investment system and investment methods, and shared them in an easy-to-understand manner through cases. In the book, he disclosed Hillhouse Capital’s 7 investment formulas and The 10 major investment cases, through the hand-drawn mind map, in the simplest way, so that everyone can understand.
This is the work of Mr. Zhang Lei for many years, and it is also a rare "Investment Book". This book has been unanimously recommended by more than 50 business and investment professionals at home and abroad, and it is very worth learning. This book is a hardcover collector's edition. You can learn Zhang Lei's wisdom with one less takeaway. You can purchase this hardcover edition of "Value" with the commodity card above
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In addition, Mr. Zhang Lei’s personal wealth is more than 20 billion yuan. He did not write the book to make money, but to teach the profession. All the proceeds from the manuscript fee of this book will be donated to China’s education. This is what Zhang Lei has always been passionate about. Charity and education are in the same line.
