China's GSR Ventures appoints first female managing director

She will work alongside existing managing directors Allen Zhu, James Ding, and Richard Lim. GSR has 11 partners - of which four are women - below the managing director level. Zhang was previously a partner, having joined the firm in 2012.

Her most significant investment to date is social media and e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu, also known as Red. GSR participated in a seed round for the company in 2013 and re-upped in the Series A. Red is now said to be worth $6 billion.

Zhang's first exit came in 2018 with the sale of artificial intelligence (AI) chip developer DeePhi Technology to US-listed Xilinx for $300 million. The company was founded three years earlier on the Tsinghua University campus by Song Yao, a recent graduate in electrical engineering. Zhang, who graduated from the same program, took GSR into the angel round. Yao recently launched his own fund to back start-ups created at Chinese universities.

Zhang currently focuses on enterprise technology. Portfolio companies include enterprise RPA platform Encoo and software-as-a-service players Black Lake Technologies and Moka.

"My goal is to help people build transformative companies for a better world. I love working with extraordinary entrepreneurs from the early stages as their best business partner and supportive friend. Nothing delights me more than witnessing the meteoric rise of portfolio companies, like glowing stars that encourage a new generation to look to the sky and be inspired to turn their dreams into reality," Zhang said in a LinkedIn post.

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• Topics
• Greater China
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• GSR Ventures
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• Appointments