Page 32 - Forbes - Asia (April 2019)

Neo Nie, 27

FOUNDER AND CEO, HEYTEA CHINA
How do you like your tea? To Nie Yunchen, who goes by the name
Neo Nie, the answer is topping each cup of tea with a layer of
foamed cheese. Founded in 2012 in Jiangmen, China, Nie’s HEYTEA
has taken the country’s younger generation by storm, and has
started to expand outside China. It pioneered a new type of tea
called naigai cha, known in English as cheese tea, which has a
special cheese foam topping on different brews of tea and fruit
drinks. Its special cheese foam is exactly why HEYTEA stands out
from similar milk tea offerings. “We want to upgrade milk tea,” he
says. “We use the best milk to make the cheese topping, and it has • A S I
a sweet aftertaste that works with traditional tea.” A
Today, HEYTEA sells more than 2,000 cups of tea a day in each
of its 170 stores across China, with revenues topping 1 billion yuan •
($150 million) last year. Investors have taken notice, with Longzhu
Capital, the investment arm of Hong Kong-listed Meituan Dianping, • 2 0 1 9 •
investing $60 million into the company last year.
Meanwhile, Nie is branching out, and has started to offer coffee
products. Starting last month, HEYTEA will offer coffee, which also
comes with cheese foam, at selected stores in China. Consumers
can get HEYTEA’s cheese-topped Americano for $3.20 or iced
coffee for $3.70. “We don’t want to make traditional coffee drinks,”
Nie explains. “We want to find new inspirations.” One of its recently
opened outlets in Singapore is also offering alcoholic cheese foam
teas and fruit drinks.
When Nie was still attending university in 2010, he noticed that
smartphone sales were just taking off in China. He tried his luck by
selling phones in his hometown Jiangmen, but closed that shop
upon graduation in 2011 because peddling phones was “boring.”
—Yue Wang

Retail & E-commerce

Aayush Agrawal, 29 India Khanh Ngo, 29 Vietnam
Cofounder, Wok Express Executive Board Member,
TIKI Corporation
Georgianna Carlos, 28 Philippines
Founder, Fetch! Naturals Neo Nie, 27 China
Jaeyoung Choi, 27 South Korea CEO, HEYTEA
Co-President, WINGBLING Lilian Kanemaru, 19; Taiga
Takayama, 20 Japan
Sagar Yarnalkar, 29; Anurag
Gupta, 28 India Cofounders, ONE NOVA
Cofounders, DailyNinja James Prananto, 29 Indonesia
Charlie Ercan, 29 Australia Cofounder, Kopi Kenangan
Cofounder, Unique Muscle Tara Jane Sargent, 24 Australia
Founder, TJ SWIM
Ahmed Rauf Essa, 27 Pakistan
Founder, Telemart Takahiro Sumi, 29 Japan
Yizhe Gan, 25 China Founder, Sumutasu
Founder, Beijing Shell Space Natasha Toh, 28; Ryan Ho, 28
Technology Singapore
Cofounders, The Fun Empire
Chirag Gupta, 26 India
Cofounder, Deyor Camps Karan Virwani, 27 India
CEO, WeWork India
Lewis Gyson, 28 New Zealand
Founder, Ant Agung Bezharie, 29; Sofian
Hadiwijaya, 29; Harya Putra, 24
Jayant Jha, 29 India Indonesia
Cofounder, Yaantra
Cofounders, Warung Pintar
Tanvi Johri, 27 India Angky William, 28 Indonesia
Cofounder, Carmesi
Cofounder, Stoqo
Ye-seul Jung, 28 South Korea Kendrick Wong, 26 Malaysia
CEO, O!OI
CEO, Omnilytics
Sangmin Theodore Kim, 27 Yang Manjing, 27 China
South Korea
Founder, Veluga Brewery Cofounder, Garden Lis Fashion
Zhan Chufeng, 29 China
Jun Ho Lee, 27 South Korea Founder, Souptown
Founder, JIENEM
Delphine Lefay, 29 Hong Kong JUDGES
Cofounder, OnTheList
Zhang Lei, China
Lou Yun, 29 China Founder, Hillhouse Capital
Cofounder, Club Factory
Hiroshi Mikitani, Japan
Kenji Miki, 28 Japan CEO, Rakuten HU KE FOR FORBES ASIA
Founder, Tabinaka
Allan Zeman, Hong Kong
Founder and Chairman,
Lan Kwai Fong

28 | FORBES ASIA APRIL 2019 FOR MORE: WWW.FORBES.COM/UNDER30/LIST/2019/ASIA