HeyTea
Funding History
| Growth Round · 03/2020 | $2.3B |
|---|---|
| Series D · 07/2021 | $9.3B |
About
HeyTea is a privately held Chinese tea beverage company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Shenzhen. It is widely credited with popularizing "cheese tea" — fresh-brewed tea topped with a light salted cheese foam — and fruit teas across China's "new-style tea" category.
- Founder
- Nie Yunchen
- Headquarters
- Shenzhen, China
- Founded
- 2012
Overview
HeyTea (Chinese: 喜茶) is a Chinese tea beverage chain best known for popularizing "cheese tea" — fresh tea topped with a salted cheese foam — alongside fruit teas. Founded in May 2012 by Nie Yunchen in Jiangmen, Guangdong, under the name Royal Tea, the company rebranded as HeyTea in 2016 after a trademark dispute. Headquartered in Shenzhen's Nanshan District, HeyTea grew from a single storefront into one of China's most recognized "new-style tea" brands, expanding past 4,000 stores across mainland China and, since 2018, into more than a dozen overseas markets including Singapore, the UK, Australia, Canada, Malaysia and the United States. The company raised a Series D round of $500 million in July 2021 that valued it at roughly $9.3 billion, and has repeatedly denied concrete plans for a public listing despite periodic reports of Hong Kong IPO preparations.
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