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Yun’an Wang’s Guming Holdings, a bubble tea firm raised as high as $233 million in its initial public offering.
Wang sells bubble tea under the GoodMe brand. (Photo Credits: X)
China’s sprawling bubble tea industry has witnessed yet another emerging billionaire with Yun’an Wang, the 30-year-old founder of Guming Holdings, which recently raised a whopping $233 million in Hong Kong’s initial public offering. After setting the price of its share at the top of an indicated range, the IPO bolstered the value of the stake to $1.1 billion, taking the millennial founder to the billionaires club. The shares were sold for $1.3 each at 6.4 per cent.
With the latest feat, Yun’an Wang’s company has made among the top performers in the bubble tea market, which is forecasted to balloon to $71 billion in three years. Wang and his team, led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS Group AG are betting that their bubble tea under the GoodMe brand will appeal to the investors because of its unique strategy, particularly targeting smaller cities and townships where the drink is not readily available.
Who is Yun’an Wang? China’s Bubble Tea Billionaire
Wang’s journey to becoming a billionaire started nearly 15 years ago when he opened his first stop in his hometown of Daxi in Zhejiang province near Shanghai – a population of under 2,00,000 which makes it a very tiny place by Chinese standards. According to The Japan Times, his shop remained empty in the early days with rare occasions when he would sell only 100 yuan (Rs 1189) of tea a day.
After years of remaining in the market, his brand eventually caught on and expanded deeper into the market to open 10,000 stores. Having survived the ultra-competitive landscape, the brand is now the second largest among freshly made bubble tea in terms of total sales and the total number of stores at the end of 2023, as per the research cited in the IPO prospectus.
At the end of 2023, Wang’s GoodMe had a market share of 9.1 per cent and stands among China’s type top five bubble tea brands. Speaking to the Southern Metropolis Daily in 2023, the CEO explained that he was already used to a price war, considering a new bubble tea brand pops up every year.
Meanwhile, Wang whose parents also ran a small business near the border of Myanmar, received his bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from the Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in 2010 – the same year when he opened his first store.
- Location :
Delhi, India, India
