---
title: "Genki Forest Hires Luckin Coffee HR Exec to Enter Trillion-Yuan Coffee Market?"
description: "Genki Forest has recently hired Ran Hao, former HRD of Luckin Coffee, to bolster its expansion into the coffee market. Ran Hao, who built Luckin's HR system, joins as Genki Forest diversifies beyond sparkling water into new categories like coffee and milk tea."
author: "王琳"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2020-12-10"
language: "en"
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# Genki Forest Hires Luckin Coffee HR Exec to Enter Trillion-Yuan Coffee Market?

> Genki Forest has recently hired Ran Hao, former HRD of Luckin Coffee, to bolster its expansion into the coffee market. Ran Hao, who built Luckin's HR system, joins as Genki Forest diversifies beyond sparkling water into new categories like coffee and milk tea.

Genki Forest has recently welcomed a new HR executive: Ran Hao, former HRD of Luckin Coffee.
According to public information, Ran Hao joined Luckin Coffee in 2017 and single-handedly built Luckin's human resources management system. Before joining Luckin, Ran Hao worked at CAR Inc. for nearly 10 years. Although Ran Hao's title was HRD (Human Resources Director), Luckin did not have a CHO (Chief Human Resources Officer) for a long time, so he was effectively the top HR person at Luckin Coffee.
On April 2, 2020, Luckin Coffee announced that it had admitted to fraudulent transactions of 2.2 billion yuan, and its stock was subsequently suspended, leading to significant management changes. A former Luckin employee who worked there for many years revealed that Ran Hao's departure was not surprising, saying, "He had already fallen out with Old Lu (Lu Zhengyao) twice." In fact, as early as June this year, there were internal rumors at Luckin Coffee that Ran Hao had already resigned. Compared to facing massive investor litigation compensation and a disgraced reputation at Luckin Coffee, joining Genki Forest is a better choice. This startup, founded only three years ago, has achieved a valuation leap from 0 to 14 billion yuan in three years, relying on the concept of "sugar-free sparkling water" and a Japanese-inspired style.
But Genki Forest's ambitions go far beyond "sparkling water." Internally, Genki Forest has established a research and development center, continuously launching new products including Ran Tea, Milk Tea, Pet Collagen Protein Water, and functional drinks. In August this year, Genki Forest also launched a new coffee latte milk tea, moving closer to the ready-to-drink coffee market.
At this moment, the purpose of bringing in Ran Hao is clear. **But in the past, few beverage categories have been able to create two hit products. Nongfu Spring, Master Kong, and Red Bull have all relied on a single product to remain invincible for a long time. How can the newly emerging Genki Forest break this deadlock?**
**-01-**
**Genki Forest: More Than Just Sparkling Water**
Few people know that before the success of sparkling water, Genki Forest had made other attempts—two fruit-flavored drinks and a sugar-free oolong tea called Ran Tea. Just as today, when people mention Genki Forest, they instinctively think of "sparkling water," few know that Genki Forest currently has dozens of lesser-known drinks under its umbrella.
These products include product lines such as Ran Tea, energy drinks, milk tea, yogurt, and sparkling juice, with dozens of flavors. The products focus on sugar-free health, and Genki Forest is striving to break out of the single-hit consumption scenario and move towards a multi-category direction.
All these products come from Genki Forest's R&D center. It is reported that Genki Forest has about 3,000 employees, of which more than 300 are engaged in R&D, accounting for more than 10% of the total workforce. The product department is the company's core department.
This year, after Luckin's self-disclosed financial fraud incident, Heytea and Naixue Tea have successively entered the coffee market. In August, Genki Forest also joined the fray, launching a new coffee latte milk tea.
In fact, Genki Forest had long intended to enter the coffee market. In 2017, Challenger Capital, founded by Genki Forest founder Tang Binsen, invested in Never Coffee, and Challenger Capital was also the sole investor in Never Coffee's angel round.
Tianyancha information shows that the second largest shareholder of Aika Fei (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (i.e., Never Coffee) is Beijing Challenger Technology Co., Ltd., holding a 20% stake.
It is reported that Never Coffee is a bottled ready-to-drink coffee category, priced at 9.9 yuan per bottle, with products including cold-brewed black coffee, cold-brewed lime coffee, and cold-brewed latte. In addition, Never Coffee also sells specialty drip coffee, specialty coffee beans, and coffee-related products.
In October this year, there were reports that Genki Forest was about to launch two new coffee products, "Heize" and "Qianjie," with bottle packaging styles and slogans similar to Genki Forest. Since the manufacturer is Kunshan Tongshi Enterprise Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uni-President, and this factory is one of Genki Forest's main commissioned manufacturers, these two products were also considered new Genki Forest products.
However, a Genki Forest spokesperson said at the time that the investment in Never Coffee was unrelated to Genki Forest and that they had not planned a coffee category. The two new coffee products, "Heize" and "Qianjie," were also not Genki Forest series products.
But just a month later, Ran Hao, the former HR head of Luckin Coffee, joined Genki Forest. Ran Hao has considerable resources in the industry, and his joining can help Genki Forest quickly fill the talent gap in the coffee field.
**-02-**
**The Challenge of Going from Single-Hit Hero to Multi-Front Parallel**
In the Chinese beverage market, giants such as Nongfu Spring, Master Kong, Coca-Cola, and Red Bull have long dominated the top positions in water, tea, and functional drinks. Big players monopolize large categories, making it difficult for small entrepreneurs to compete. Genki Forest's success lies in its creation of a new category—sugar-free sparkling water.
Genki Forest founder Tang Binsen once used an example to explain his entrepreneurial philosophy: **If a person is reading a book on the New York subway, do you think this person is more likely to be educated or uneducated?** This involves the classic theory in statistics: Bayes' theorem. The core principle of this theory is that **the probability of an event occurring equals the base probability multiplied by the probability of the event itself.** By analogy, subway passengers in New York are among the lowest earners in society, and statistically, they are less educated, so the person reading is still uneducated.
This theory is applied to entrepreneurship, meaning that what entrepreneurship should choose is a good industry and a good track. Because a good track has the possibility of explosive growth and faster success.
Tang Binsen's choice was not wrong. Sparkling water with the concept of sugar-free is rare in China. It is also with sugar-free sparkling water that Genki Forest achieved a valuation surge from 0 to 14 billion yuan in three years. In the first half of 2020 alone, Genki Forest's sales reached 800 million yuan.
Like all veteran beverage players, Genki Forest also wants to complete the challenge of going from a single-hit hero to multi-front parallel. This year, Genki Forest has been continuously launching new categories.
But unfortunately, its predecessors have all failed without exception. For example, Nongfu Spring has successively launched products such as Oriental Leaf Tea, Scream, Water-soluble C100, Vitamin Water, and Tea π, but none have become hugely popular.
Nongfu Spring's prospectus shows that from 2017 to 2019, drinking water contributed more than half of its revenue, and in 2019, this figure was nearly 60%. Compared to other products, drinking water also has the highest gross margin.
For example, apart from Iced Black Tea, Master Kong has successively launched Master Kong drinking water, Crystal Grape, Rock Sugar Pear, and other juice drinks, but they remain niche in the beverage industry.
Past experience consistently shows the difficulty of innovation in the beverage industry. Coca-Cola, a company over a century old, still has its best-selling product as Coca-Cola.
Looking around, no one has yet been able to shake the dominance of Nongfu Spring, Master Kong, and Coca-Cola in their respective fields. The coffee and milk tea launched by Genki Forest both have super brands that have already captured consumer mindshare. How to differentiate marketing and innovation will be the next focus.
**Another challenge is that for many years, the trend in the beverage industry has been that all players will flock to produce the same category, especially in an environment where innovation costs are high but "copying" costs are low.** This year, Heytea, Naixue Tea, and Wanglaoji have all launched sparkling water products.
**Just from the perspective of channels and marketing strategies, Heytea and Naixue Tea are by no means inferior. How Genki Forest maintains its first-mover advantage is another factor it needs to consider.** Whether Genki Forest can grow from a 10-billion-yuan company to a 100-billion-yuan enterprise depends on this.
**-03-**
**Tang Binsen's Consumer Landscape and Ambition**
Tang Binsen, who comes from a gaming background, has a strong interest in consumption. In 2016, when capital was frantically pouring into shared bikes and shared power banks, Tang Binsen had the foresight to establish Genki Forest.
But Tang Binsen's ambitions are by no means limited to beverages. More precisely, Genki Forest is just a small part of Tang Binsen's consumer landscape.
In 2014, before founding Genki Forest, Tang Binsen established Challenger Capital. To date, Challenger Capital manages assets totaling 5 billion yuan, focusing on consumption and TMT. It has invested in more than 100 startups, including Tiger Brokers, Home Game, Genki Forest, Vitality 28, Lamian Talk, Panda Brew, Guanyun Baijiu, and Haowangshui. It can be said that in the consumer track, Genki Forest is a hit-maker.
Tang Binsen clearly has his own judgment. In Tang Binsen's view, the gap in living standards between the Chinese and American publics does not come from high technology but from consumer goods. What improves people's lives are products of higher quality than ordinary industrial alcohol, such as craft beer. The United States already has many excellent craft beer companies, while China lacks local brands.
Therefore, Tang Binsen entered the game early during Panda Brew's Series A round.
The now-popular consumer brand "Lamian Talk" also has Challenger Capital behind it. According to public information, Challenger Capital invested in "Lamian Talk" during its angel round.
It is not difficult to see from the popularity of Panda Brew and Lamian Talk that they are highly consistent with Genki Forest. Taking Lamian Talk as an example, in an era when instant noodles are prevalent, Lamian Talk pioneered the "premium instant noodles" category. It is reported that its founding team went to Japan to seek entrepreneurial inspiration and finally brought back "see what you get" premium Japanese-style instant ramen.
At the same time, since its inception, Lamian Talk has almost hit three major marketing trends: content marketing in 2017, social e-commerce in 2018, and e-commerce live streaming in 2019. In its seventh collaboration with Li Jiaqi, Lamian Talk sold out 2.8 million yuan within one second of going live, showing consumers' strong affection.
Through minimalist aesthetic design and Japanese-style or Japanese-inspired product styles, Tang Binsen has established emotional resonance with young people and quietly captured market share. Tang Binsen's investment in enterprises is not just about giving money; it is reported that Challenger Capital pays special attention to linkage with enterprises and places great emphasis on subsequent development after investment.
Tang Binsen is attempting to establish a set of new consumer product methodologies: **using market information asymmetry to first create surprises for local consumers; not making cheap goods or competing on price, but only benchmarking against the highest quality in the same category; highlighting a different selling point in each vertical niche category; and supplementing with massive marketing momentum.**
However, whether this is truly a universally applicable approach still needs to be tested by the market.
Source: Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618), Author: Wang Lin
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