Seeing the Unseen

CHAPTER 9The Global Chinese Community Fills the Gaps

WHILE CHINESE COMPANIES VENTURING overseas often encounter a lot of challenges, especially when they already have a major business back home in China, the global Chinese entrepreneurial community is taking some of the learnings from China, internalizing these experiences very well, and leveraging their strong understanding in overseas markets to build successful businesses.

The two companies that emerged in Southeast Asia and quickly evolved into global giants, Sea Group and J&T Express, are perhaps the best examples of this group. Founders of both companies originally came from China, but had lived, studied, and/or worked in Southeast Asia for years.

Some might argue that US-based companies such as Zoom and DoorDash fall into this category too. For example, DoorDash's founder immigrated to the United States from the Chinese city of Nanjing at a young age. As a result, the company has much better access to Meituan's experiences in food delivery, as well as a better capacity to study, understand, and adapt some of these learnings.

There are more: Stori, a neobank in Mexico; HungryPanda, a London-based food delivery platform; Flash Express, a Thai ecommerce logistics company; Wiz, a Singapore-based voice AI startup; the list goes on.

“This group of entrepreneurs originally from Mainland China is creating impact in consumer tech in a similar way to how the Taiwanese dominated the semiconductor industry,” one prominent consumer ...