Guancha

Guancha (关茶) is a Chinese matcha snack brand founded by "Xiao Guan," a Tsinghua University finance graduate who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and then studied tea in Japan before launching the company in 2016 . The brand explores what it calls "ten thousand possibilities for matcha," developing creative snacks rich in tea polyphenols using authentic matcha and quality ingredients; by mid-2018 it had over 40 SKUs and had opened an offline experience store . FreeS Fund led Guancha's angel round in 2016 and later participated in its Series A, which raised tens of millions of RMB and was announced in August 2018 . The fund cited founder Xiao Guan's dedication to food innovation and her vision of building a beloved brand that delivers happiness through flavor as the basis for its early backing, even when the company had little operating data .