Former Luckin HRD joins sugar-free beverage giant Genki Forest, which may enter the coffee market

Ran Hao, the director of human resources who previously worked for Luckin Coffee, recently joined Genki Forest, a Chinese diet soda unicorn, according to an exclusive source from Chinese media tech618.

Ran Hao joined Luckin Coffee in 2017, although his official position is HRD, he has been responsible for the job of chief human resources officer. He resigned from Luckin Coffe in June after the financial fraud scandal broke.

Also See: Four Months After the Financial Scandal, Luckin Coffee is Still Booming

Genki Forest is a Chinese soda company founded in 2016, although it has a Japanese name. It is rapidly popular in China for the production of sugar-free sparkling water and sweet tea. Since the beginning of this year, it has begun to expand its business, entering the energy drink market and the yogurt market successively.

Although sales of Genki Forest soda were hit by Covid-19 in the first quarter, demand rebounded strongly after the outbreak. According to people familiar with the matter, Genki Forest sold 400 million yuan (about $61 million) of drinks in the best month of the year.

Also see: What is Genki Forest ?

Two months ago, the company announced at an internal meeting that, the company revealed that it had set the total target sales of offline sales channels at 7.5billion yuan (about US $1.145 billion) in 2021. This is at least three times higher than its figure in 2020 when the company aims to sell 2.5billion yuan (about $382 million) through all channels in 2020.

Tang Binsen, the founder of Genki Forest, had previously invested in Never Coffee, a small Chinese bottled coffee brand. On the other hand, Genki Forest has tried to produce two bottled coffee, but they are not officially available to consumers.

In previous internal meetings, Genki Forest also announced that they have a large number of new products that have not yet been introduced to the market. This seems to suggest that the company is very likely to officially enter the bottled coffee market in 2021.