James Tan
James Tan is Managing Partner at Quest Ventures, a top venture capital fund in Asia. Prior to this, James was co-founder and COO of 55tuan, a NASDAQ listed e-commerce group that grew to more than 200 cities and 5,000 employees across China.
James is a board member or angel investor in top tier startups in Asia such as 99.co, Carousell, Carro, Ethis, Glife, and Shopback.
James serves on several non-profit organisations. He is Chairman of the Social Impact Catalyst – Southeast Asia’s largest youth network for social impact. He is a board member on the Applied Innovation Institute – global leaders in industries, government, and academia for business transformation; and Sports Excellence Business – helping athletes excel with life after sport transition. He is a former Chairman of the Action Community for Entrepreneurship – Singapore’s national voice for entrepreneurship; and former Chairman of the Business Angel Network of Southeast Asia – Asia’s oldest angel investment network.
He has been guest speaker at Asia-focused and private equity events such as ITB Berlin, Private Equity Insights, Stanford-PARC Digital Cities, SWITCH, and World Islamic Economic Forum. He has guest lectured at universities including Fudan, IE, NTU, Tsinghua, and UC Berkeley.
James was recognised as an outstanding overseas Chinese by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council of China. He is a recipient of the Alumni Award from the University of South Australia. He received scholarships from both Beijing and Singapore governments for his MBA from Tsinghua University in partnership with MIT. During the first dot-com era, he studied and dropped out of computer science at NUS to work on two-sided markets.
For leisure, James enjoys photography and has been featured in ComputerWorld, Readers’ Digest, and commercially represented by Liaison Agency. He backpacks Asia and volunteers in marine conservation as a PADI scuba-diving instructor.
Accurate as of Jan 2024
Select Investments
42race
99.co
Billz
Carousell
Carro
Cerebra
CTOgram
Egistic
Ethis
Fairmarch
Glife
Hepmil
ION Mobility
Oddle
Kapital Boost
Popsical
PostCo
Social Collider
ShopBack
Spiking
StyleTheory
Transwap
VulcanPost
Xfers