Ray Hu, Founder & Managing Partner of Blue Lake Capital, delivered a recent speech titled “The Future of China’s Digital Economy from a Venture Capital Perspective” at the World Innovators Meet (WIM) 2021 Global Real Economy and Technology Summit, hosted by EqualOcean.

This speech has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Dear all, I am Ray Hu, the founder and managing partner of Blue Lake Capital. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you today.

Blue Lake Capital is a venture capital firm specializing in the technology sector. Since our founding in 2014, we have made investments targeting digital transformation and digital upgrades. We see two major motivations for digitalization: one is cost reduction and efficiency which can be improved through software for daily operation and management; the other is the constant need for upgrades and iteration in China’s vast manufacturing industry. Accordingly, we focus on investment in intelligent manufacturing and enterprise software, especially cloud-based SaaS software.

2020 proved to be remarkably special. It saw an almost 17% rise in GDP for the software and IT services industry. This high growth rate in a single sector in such a huge economy is partly fueled by the pandemic and partly because China is hitting rapid growth in digitalization.

China’s digital transformation is unique, and it’s only just beginning. There are almost 200 software companies listed in the A-share market, valued at a total of 3 trillion yuan, representing a significant revenue volume, and China is a leader globally in terms of research capabilities in artificial intelligence technology. As a result, digitalization and intelligence in China progress in tandem and largely on the same frequency as the world.

Digitalization has broad applications in China’s manufacturing industry. However, this industry has faced a considerable challenge: it’s big but not strong. To achieve breakthroughs in manufacturing capacity and efficiency, we, as the world’s most significant manufacturing power, should inevitably turn to “digital transformation and upgrades.” The country has high expectations and high requirements for the manufacturing industry, especially in terms of core process innovation, digitalization of production lines, intelligent equipment, and localization of industrial software. This turns out to be a good opportunity for entrepreneurship and investment.

So how big is the market opportunity in this industry? Let’s make a simple analogy. Informatization and digitization have been revolutionizing the consumer market in China since 2000. China’s six largest consumer tech companies add up to a market cap of almost $2.5 trillion US dollars. As the world’s second-largest economy, China is bursting with market opportunities even greater than the consumer market, if enterprise management and manufacturing can be intelligently and digitally transformed.

Among these opportunities, we see application-side enterprise software offerings as “low-hanging fruit” that will mature the fastest in the next 2 to 3 years. Let’s make a simple calculation of the growth of China’s SaaS market in the next few years. Based on a P/S standard growth rate of 20-25x (the average P/S for US SaaS companies is 20x), the value of China’s SaaS market is expected to exceed 6 trillion yuan in 2025. China’s SaaS software entrepreneurship is entering into its golden time:

First, the software market shows strong performance both in terms of supply and demand. China has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world. The public cloud infrastructure here is expanding at an extremely rapid pace. Compared with 2015, AliCloud’s revenue grew 50-fold over five years, while its public cloud offerings saw a dramatic drop in unit price. This is a very representative signal. Similarly, the US SaaS software market also began to boom with the commercialization of AWS in those days. It made an affordable platform available for developers, which contributed to the blossoming of the SaaS market.

Second, we believe that Chinese entrepreneurs stand a perfect chance of making globally leading software products. For one thing, China already leads the world in AI algorithms and capabilities, and today’s enterprise software has undergone the digitization and intelligentization process. For another thing, China leads the world in the mobile internet ecosystem. Thanks to the accumulation of the consumer internet industry in the past two decades, we now enjoy the world’s leading mobile payment and communication software. Many applications can be exposed to end-users through mini-programs and enterprise-level communication tools—DingTalk, WeCom, Feishu, etc. 

Third, Although China’s SaaS offerings remain in the early stages of popularization compared to the mature market in the US, we believe that, fueled by the previous two reasons, the penetration of SaaS offerings in China can increase from 13% in 2020 to 25% in 2023.

SaaS offerings are one of the few growing and reliable business models in the B2B market. The past 2 to 3 years have seen increasing attention in the software industry from the primary market. 2021 is a milestone year. Investment in the SaaS industry in the first half of this year was 70% of that in the whole of last year, and VCs are increasing their investment in the software industry.

In the secondary market, the cumulative market cap of the 40 leading cloud-based SaaS companies in the US has grown nearly 6.7 times over the past five years. In comparison, the Nasdaq index has grown 1.8 times, meaning that SaaS software companies outperformed the technology stock market by almost five times. This is similar to the Chinese market. We have fitted the market cap performance of A-share listed SaaS companies to the Blue Lake China SaaS Index. This index also outperformed the A-share index by 4 to 5 times. The capital market shows high investment enthusiasm for SaaS enterprises.

As a venture capital firm specializing in digital transformation and upgrades, we have invested in nearly 30 companies in the software industry over the past five years, making extensive layouts. More than 10 of them have now reached first place in their respective tracks, each of them at least two to three times bigger than their biggest competitor.

 These products focus on scenarios in various functional departments of enterprises, such as sales, human resources, procurement, finance, and legal affairs as well as subsectors like automobile, catering, e-commerce, games, and industry.

The application scenario in the manufacturing industry is particularly worth mentioning. If we split the business chain of the manufacturing industry, there are a lot of digitalization scenarios involved, ranging from supply chain collaboration, procurement, and design of core software components to the production process and the post-production inspection link. Blue Lake has also made investments in each of these segmented scenarios. The inspection link, for example, is perceived as a very traditional artificial link, i.e., engineers send sample products to the laboratory for quality inspection. However, this approach has made it increasingly difficult to meet production requirements. Many manufacturers have raised new requirements for inspection means and methods today, including demanding full inspections. In this regard, efficiently capturing the data collected in the inspection, like optical, vibration, and acoustic signals, and making quick and accurate judgments, has become an urgent issue. Digitalization enters the picture as the best solution.

Digital innovation spans a vast scope and is a world-class market where Chinese entrepreneurs can participate and make an impact. As a venture capital firm concerned with the digital transformation and upgrading of enterprises, we have seen an increasing number of startup teams on the front line make breakthroughs in technology and products. We believe China will bring world-class digitalized products to the global market.

Looking back, what is the core driving force behind China’s miraculous ability to sustain rapid growth over the last four decades from reform and opening until now? From a humanistic perspective, it is the hard-working spirit of the Chinese people. From an industrial perspective, China is now at a special stage of development. China spent 40 years advancing in urbanization, industrialization, and informatization all in parallel, covering a development course of nearly 200 years in Western countries. As the world’s second-largest economy, China still boasts a world-leading GDP growth rate today. As an investment institution, we feel fortunate to be able to do our part in the digital transformation and upgrading of China’s economy together with outstanding entrepreneurs.Thank you.

Blue Lake Capital was awarded the following at the World Innovation Award 2021 (WIA2021)

– 2021 China’s 10 Investment Institutions: Science & Technology

– 2021 China’s 10 Investment Institutions: Smart Manufacturing

HireEZ, the global AI talent recruitment platform formerly known as Hiretual, recently closed a Series B+ funding of $26 million USD led by US-based Conductive Ventures and followed by Blue Lake Capital, a leading Chinese venture capital fund.

HireEZ was founded in Silicon Valley in 2015. As one of the fastest-growing AI technology companies in Silicon Valley, hireEZ is committed to building the world’s largest talent knowledge map and AI recruitment SaaS system. Between its leading technology and products and its incredible 250%+ annual revenue growth, hireEZ was ranked top three in the recruitment automation category by G2 Crowd in 2022.

Traditional recruiting solutions are stretched thin in today’s tight labor market. According to a study submitted in January 2022 by SIA (Staffing Industry Analysts), the US’s top HR consulting firm, more than 71% of companies are facing a talent shortage and plan to increase their recruiting budgets. The high cost of recruiting has led many companies to use SaaS on a large scale to fuel talent acquisition. hireEZ is transforming the existing passive recruitment model with “Outbound Recruiting” which implants AI in each company’s HR system and improve the intelligence of recruitment of automated recruitment. The term “outbound recruiting” is derived from “outbound marketing,” which has been popular since around the turn of the millennium. For hireEZ users, the average time to find the right candidate has been reduced by 50%, while acquiring 5x more suitable candidates.

hireEZ’s entrepreneurial journey began with a common pain point that the two founders, Jiang Haiqing (Steven Jiang) and Zhang Xinwen, experienced at Samsung R&D. When Jiang first arrived at Samsung’s newly established R&D department, the biggest challenge was how to recruit the right talent for the job. From seven employees in the beginning to a team of two or three hundred a few years later, recruiting was an issue the two often discussed. Jiang found that the current recruitment process and methods made it difficult to complete the recruitment task with efficiency and high standards. In his opinion, recruitment is a basic problem faced by all industries and all companies. With their confidence in technology and business know-how, they decided to enter the recruitment SaaS industry, thus starting their technology venture.

Today, hireEZ is the market-leading intelligent recruiting SaaS system that provides employers with talent market insights. hireEZ builds data-driven recruiting strategies to engage with the right candidates by integrating with nearly 50 leading CRM/ATS platforms and having over 750 million candidate resumes. With hireEZ, employers can execute a proactive, strategic, and scalable recruiting strategy to achieve rapid team expansion.

Thanks to its globalization strategy, hireEZ’s clients among Fortune 500 companies include technology giants such as Cisco, Zoom, Facebook, Amazon, and many other established companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Verizon, and Adobe. hireEZ’s clients come from over 30 countries, with most coming from high net worth markets such as the US and Europe.

As a well-known venture capital firm with extensive investment in SaaS, Blue Lake Capital has been looking for investment opportunities in different segments of intelligent SaaS in the global arena. Based on the success of the “active marketing model,” Blue Lake believes hireEZ to be the ZoomInfo of the recruitment industry, allowing recruiters to proactively reach potential candidates. According to Chen Haohui, the partner at Blue Lake Capital, “hireEZ provides recruiters with a ‘talent resume database.’” In the coming years, as the proactive recruiting approach matures, it will gradually become an indispensable channel for corporate recruiting in the global market, just like the explosive growth of proactive sales a few years before.

With the completion of a new round of funding, the company has upgraded its branding from Hiretual to hireEZ. hireEZ is inspired by the company’s mission: Outbound Recruiting Made Easy (EZ), and is dedicated to truly realizing its revolutionary vision of “Make Jobs Find People.” “In this unprecedented era, recruiting has become an extremely challenging task,” says CEO and co-founder Jiang Haiqing. “Recruiting teams can no longer afford to wait for candidates to submit their resumes; they must take a more proactive approach to recruitment to effectively grow the company’s workforce. That’s why we upgraded our brand from Hiretual to hireEZ to clarify our mission.”

hireEZ is a global and multicultural company that has been committed to empowering global recruitment since day one. Currently, hireEZ has built a global driving engine with collaboration in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Xiamen, and its Silicon Valley headquarters, with talent from seven countries working together for the success of hireEZ’s global clients. hireEZ employees have worked for some of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley, and have graduated from Stanford, UC Berkeley, Peking University, China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, and other top universities.

Jiang Haiqing graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China with a degree in Computer Science, and the CTO Zhang Xinwen graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from George Mason University. They have both worked at Samsung R&D. hireEZ has absolute intellectual property rights to AI technology patents and continues to collaborate with top AI labs and publish papers. After this round of financing, hireEZ plans to further invest in product innovation, expand operations, and initiate global recruitment of talented individuals to strengthen its global dominance in the active recruitment space, said Jiang Haiqing.

Haohui Chen, partner at Blue Lake Capital, has recently announced “It is a great pleasure to introduce another important investment by Blue Lake in the cross-border e-commerce sector. The sportswear category is enormous and growing steadily, and the increase in e-commerce penetration will further drive the growth of 3rd-party sellers and DTCs. Xiamen Dream Supply Chain Co., Ltd. (“Xiamen Dream”) is one of the few teams in the cross-border e-commerce field that is grounded in its supply chain integration, highly efficient, and dedicated in its operations. Xiamen Dream is gradually carving out its market share and has great potential to grow to become the best sports brand from China.”

In December 2021, the cross-border sports brand “Xiamen Dream” completed a Series A funding round of 100 million Chinese yuan led by CCIG Cultural Investment Fund (a subsidiary of China Capital Investment Group) and co-invested by Blue Lake Capital. Xiamen Dream owns “BALEAF” in addition to other sportswear brands, and it is a growing force in the international sportswear industry, with the brand becoming increasingly popular among consumers in North America and Europe.

Founded in 2014, Xiamen Dream focuses on sports apparel and peripherals in five categories: yoga, running, outdoor, cycling, and surfing & swimming. Their products are sold in North America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea, relying on brand websites and mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. Xiamen Dream is a leading company in the industry in terms of its supply chain, user scale, and brand awareness, and has maintained high growth for many years, making it one of the most promising companies in the field of cross-border e-commerce.

The core team at Xiamen Dream comes from numerous renowned Chinese Internet companies, including listed companies and traditional apparel industry giants. The team has rich experience in big data, e-commerce, supply chain, product development, brand upgrading, and more. The company greatly values its talent training and corporate culture, and has set up the Xiamen Dream Research Center to build its talent training system.

Xu Muxuan, the founder of Xiamen Dream, said, “This is a year of opportunity and a year of great challenge for Chinese manufacturers to build their brands globally. Behind a successful brand, there must be a consistent belief: a way to resist short-term temptations and consistently make the right choices. These are the questions we think about most often. We have helped a large number of suppliers grow from small workshops to companies with annual revenues of millions or tens of millions, and these partners have also worked with us to provide consumers with high-quality and cost-effective products. And it is our team, our partners, and our consumers together that have made Xiamen Dream what it is today. This new funding round marks a new starting point for Xiamen Dream. We will continue to invest in information technology, product development, and brand-building to continue to bring excellent and high quality sports products to our customers.”

Going forward, Xiamen Dream will continue to focus on the sports industry by building a brand omnichannel, continuing to expand its market scale and brand awareness, building an internal big data center, and gradually completing its digital transformation. Meanwhile, Blue Lake Capital will continue to help more Chinese brands go abroad through the standardization of the cross-border e-commerce industry.

In January 2022, the WeCom service provider “Tanma SCRM” announced that it has received a 10-million US dollar investment from Welight Capital.

In November 2021, Tanma SCRM received Series B+ funding from Zhong Ding Capital, followed by Series B funding in July, led by SoftBank Ventures Asia and co-invested by Shunwei Capital, and finally Bluelake Capital led the investment in Series A funding in May.

Founded in 2020, Tanma has nearly 500 employees with core team members from well-known enterprises at home and abroad, including Google, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, Kingdee, IBM and SalesEase. Tanma R&D Center, led by a former Baidu scientist and supported by talents from top universities around the world, focuses on cutting-edge technological innovation based on its rich experience in enterprise services.

As an integrated SaaS platform for marketing, sales, and customer services, Tanma SCRM focuses on both B2C and B2B services enterprises. Its clients come from many sectors including education and training, finance and insurance, medical beauty, home decoration, manufacturing, enterprise services, and more. Consumers in these sectors have a long decision-making cycle, attach great importance product and service experience, and have high brand loyalty. So, they often need professional help from salespersons, consultants, and other experts to establish long-term, profitable relationships.

To address these issues, Tanma launched a social SCRM system with customer and sales management as its core which helps enterprises connect with customers more conveniently than ever. Tanma provides solutions for the whole process of customer acquisition—conversion, transaction, and operation—to reach and convert quality customers. At the same time, through a combination of content and tools, Tanma enhances the professional performance and effectiveness of enterprise employees, strengthens brand trust, and forms a virtuous cycle of word-of-mouth customer acquisition.

To help enterprise customers take full advantage of WeCom to boost business growth, Tanma uses SCRM products to provide operational strategies and SCRM-accelerated implementation support for companies in the private domain businesses. This support can help enterprises to avoid poor operational thinking and low efficiency by allowing them to build on their underlying operational capabilities to achieve cross-cycle, sustainable performance growth.

Some traditional industries do not know how to operate after diverting users to WeCom, resulting in a large number of user losses. Tanma’s training programs help to resolve these issues. As an example, with Tanma’s help, one group enterprise shortened the time of internal WeCom usage training from 30 days to just 7 days, and the activity of their 7,000 employees on WeCom and SCRM increased from 60% to 95%. Further, through tactical adjustment, their rate of WeCom diversion increased from 2% to 20%. Through user research and data analysis, the Tanma team helped this client to sort out the reasons for user losses and reformulate their operation strategy. After a few tests and adjustments, the user retention rate increased to 80%.