As you know, I regularly draw from leading industry players who have given much more thought on issues than I have, Li Jianggan is the author of “Seeing the Unseen: Behind Chinese Tech Giants’ Global Venturing” a book on what the Chinese tech companies are learning from their international forays, including the mistakes they are making and the personalities of the leaders making them. For example, why did Tencent’s WeChat fail in India while Whatsapp didn’t. Li is himself an entrepreneur who had pioneered several start ups for the Rocket Internet, the German venture capital company for whom he managed several businesse s, including Food Panda in Singapore. We also discussed the challenges that TikTok faces, from geopolitical tensions to internal competition.
Li has had an interesting personal journey, a Chinese national who studied in Singapore and became very cosmopolitan himself in his own outlook on business strategies in a wide variety of countries, including India, Iran, Indonesia and others.