Jixun Foo of GGV: 2021 is a year of dramatic changes

**Hans Tung** (0:19)
Coming to you from GGV Capital, this is Evolving for the Next Billion, where we interview local champions and global giants in tech industry who are shaping the lives of the next billion internet users.
My name's Hans Tung. I'm a managing partner at GGV Capital, and I've been working at and investing in startups across the US., China, and other emerging markets for the last 20 years.

**Rita Yang** (0:45)
My name is Rita Yang. I'm the marketing manager at GGV Capital. On this show, you will hear stories about ambition, ingenuity, and resilience unfolding every day from Singapore to St. Paul, Beijing to Bangalore.
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You can join by visiting nextbn.ggvc.com. Hello, Jixun. Welcome back to the show. This year went by really fast, isn't it?

**Jixun Foo** (1:22)
It is indeed.
It's a year where effectively I've been staying in China throughout. I've not really stepped out of China since January 1st.

**Rita Yang** (1:33)
A new season for global venture capitalists. So if you were to describe 2021 in one word, what would it be?

**Jixun Foo** (1:43)
Well, I would say that 2021 is a year of changes. And I use the word changes in plural, largely because there's just so many things that go on this year, right? From the beginning of the year, you have a transition of leadership in the US.
And then you have a very, very hot market centered around digitization and IPOs. Yeah. And then middle of the year, you have a dramatic change in some of the regulatory environment here in China. And suddenly you have a number of IPOs that are slowing down.
So the momentum of IPOs are slowing down in China. And then you have this whole supply chain that is disrupted, not just from the manufacturing, but also the logistic part of it is disrupted, which many people would not have expected. And that has even caused some of the energy issues around the world with rising oil prices and the shortage of power supply, particularly here in northern part of China. So I would say it's just a lot of dramatic changes with our expectations.

**Rita Yang** (3:22)
Yeah, I still remember last year, your keywords was turning points. It feels like this year, the turning points are getting a lot more dramatic and more frequent as well.

**Jixun Foo** (3:34)
Yeah, and it's a lot less predictable than before. We have hope that the COVID could be behind us, things would have been better, but obviously it takes longer than expected. And it's still taking longer than expected before travel normalize again. Now, obviously, we have selected countries taking steps to open up, including Singapore.
I think just today, Singapore and Malaysia are having this sort of a VTL, what VTL stands for, Vaccinated Travel Lane or something like that, which allows for travels for selected with proper documentation and vaccination. Now you can travel across countries.
So I think countries are making an effort to opening up, which is a great thing. Hopefully things will get even better sometime next year.

**Rita Yang** (4:42)
So would you say that we now live in a post-pandemic world? And what are some new realities for global venture capitalists like yourself or GGV?

**Jixun Foo** (4:54)
I think we are migrating away from pandemic into endemic. I think that's a word that many communities and countries are using to say that's where they are migrating into. So we are going to be in a new norm for a little while, where we will coexist with the virus, and the virus, the COVID virus, will live among us for a while. And obviously, we have vaccination, continued improvement in the vaccination, and antiviral drugs are being developed in the meantime. So we are making progress.
But certainly, the pandemic is not over yet. I think we are seeing this migration towards an endemic into next year.

**Rita Yang** (5:53)
And what does that mean for a global venture capitalist like you?

**Jixun Foo** (5:58)
Well, I think the reality is that the digitization is accelerating around the world, not just China, US., perhaps even more so in Southeast Asia, in India, in Latin America, and other parts of the world. So digitization is happening, it's accelerating.
We are seeing more adoption in crypto.
We are seeing more discussion around the metaverse. We are seeing more awareness around the climate issue. So there are new dimensions, new issues that the communities care about even more.
ESG is becoming a tagline, a tagline that everyone cares about. Not just the government cares about, the communities care about, investors care about, companies and corporates also care about. So I think we are in this new norm where new issues and new set of considerations are rising to the top in terms of priority. So it has a definite impact on how we think about our investments, where we should be investing. And so I think underlying it, as I shared the last time and throughout the year, is around AI and robotics. The underlying technology is making more things possible, and it is definitely freeing up label and may create a little more dislocation, but therein lies also new opportunities. So what I described earlier, whether it's the climate, the metaverse, the digitization, these are new opportunities. So we have to embrace them and try to figure out, you know, how this will all happen in this, as we migrate through the post-pandemic world.