After leaving leading Chinese travel website Qunar.com two months ago, Zhuang Chenchao, founder and ex-CEO of the company, confirms that he has set up an investment company named Banma Touzi, or Zebra Investment, Tecent Tech reported on Friday.
In fact, Zhuang had been making investments in other fields before he resigned from Qunar. According to publicly disclosed information, Zhuang is the angel investor of online financial search platform Rong 360 and vertical e-commerce platform Meilishuo, and also a limited partner at Crystal Stream Investment Fund and Source Code Capital.
Judging from Zhuang’s former investments, he has a preference for specialty search engines like Qunar.com. This could be the main investment area for Zebra Investment.
“I will continue to participate in the global wave of technological innovation, and investment is one of the best ways to be involved,” Zhuang wrote in an internal resignation letter to his colleagues at Qunar.
Zhuang Chenchao founded Qunar in May 2005 and served as the CEO of the company. Last October, Ctrip, another leading online travel website in China, acquired Qunar from Qunar’s primary shareholder Baidu via an exchange of shares equivalent to 25% of voting rights. According to NetEase Finance, the deal was made privately between Baidu and Ctrip without consent from the administration of Qunar, which led to the resignation of Zhuang and a few other former high executives at
There are quite a few people who have completed the transformation from entrepreneur to investor before Zhuang, such as Sequoia Capital’s Shen Nanpeng, who participated in the foundation of Ctrip, Lin Xinhe of venture capital firm DCM, who helped establish the predecessor of China’s top social media Sina, and Wu Shichun of Plum Ventures, who founded the online travel platform Kuxun.cn.
(Top photo from http://www.itbear.com.cn)