Junjie Zhang
张俊杰
Junjie Zhang is the founder and head of Chagee (Bawang Chaji / 霸王茶姬), the Chinese tea chain that grew from a single shop on Kunming's Wuyi Road to roughly 4,500 stores across China and overseas as of mid-2024 . His backstory is unusually stark: he spent ages 10 to 17 living on the streets, was illiterate until 18, and went from tea-shop apprentice to brand owner in seven years, launching Chagee in 2017 . The brand's expansion has been aggressive—after pulling back from southern cities to focus on Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, it surged past 1,000 stores by late 2022 to hit 108 billion RMB in GMV for 2023 and 58 billion RMB in Q1 2024 alone . His investors include Boyu Hu and XVC; Hu has described Zhang's self-taught business instincts and willingness to keep scaling through the pandemic even when advisers urged caution . At a 2024 launch event, Zhang publicly called for China's tea brands to "go global together" as "modern Eastern tea" .
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Coverage
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