James Tan

Managing Partner


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 Southeast and Central Asia such as 99.co, Billz, 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; Intellectual Property Office of Singapore International – supporting Singapore’s future growth as a global hub for IP and Intangible Assets; 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 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 Lien Ying Chow Legacy Fellowship from the Nanyang Technological University; and 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 2025

Select Investments


42race

99.co

Billz

Carousell

Carro

Cerebra

CTOgram

Egistic

ERTH

Ethis

Glife

Hatch

Hepmil

ION Mobility

Oddle

Kamereo

Kapital Boost

PostCo

Social Collider

SoundEye

ShopBack

StyleTheory

Tictag

Transwap

Vulcan Augmetics

VulcanPost

Xfers

Ideas


Publications


Press


Get in touch at [email protected].