CHAGEE

CHAGEE (霸王茶姬) is a Chinese new-style tea brand founded by Zhang Junjie, who went from an illiterate teenager working at a milk tea shop in 2010 to launching the company in 2017 . The brand built its growth on a sharply focused "super single product" strategy, concentrating on original-leaf fresh milk tea rather than the fruit-tea trend that dominated competitors like Hey Tea and Nayuki — a pivot that came after painful failures with European-style breads and self-operated fruit supply chains, which one early executive described as "the stupidest decision" . XVC was its first institutional investor, taking nearly 20% and later helping buy out other shareholders and replace management , with Coatue and Congbi Qiushi joining in subsequent rounds . The brand's expansion has been aggressive and directly competitive with ChaYanYueSe (茶颜悦色), whose cultivated market CHAGEE moved to capture — "the红利 [market dividends] that ChaYan created were taken by CHAGEE," as one person close to ChaYan put it . By early 2024, CHAGEE had surpassed 4,500 stores and posted 2023 GMV of RMB 10.8 billion, with Q1 2024 alone hitting RMB 5.8 billion ; it received SEC approval for a U.S. IPO in March 2025 .