Partner at Sequoia China Steve Ji, Managing Director at Lightspeed China Partners James Mi, Managing Director at Highland Capital Partner China Chuan Thor, and Partner at Gobi Partners Ken Xu joined us in a panel, moderated by James Lu, senior business attorney of Cooley, at TechCrunch Shanghai today chatting about the current China tech scene.
Internet finance, enterprise software, travel service are the most mentioned topics during the session. Another unavoidable trend is mobile. As Chinese users spend increasingly more time on mobile, Chuan Thor thinks if new consumer-facing services don’t start from mobile it must be very hard in China market.
Steve Ji thinks currently the enterprise software market is still very small but is similar to what the gaming market was like years back. Now the gaming is one of the largest sectors in China in terms of revenue and total time spent.
Chinese Internet companies have come up with a lot of innovative business models, Chuan Thor concludes, including the one by Qihoo which was funded by his company.
Ken Xu expects a lot of traditional industries to be moved online in near future and almost all traditional travel agencies in China now are online.
Actually you’d know what VCs are chasing after in China by taking a look at their recent investment cases.
The focus of Sequoia China in recent years, especially this year, is Internet-based finance that it has invested in financial social media Xueqiu, financial product search service Rong360 and credit card manager Kaniu. The company’s coverage also includes the trendy online education ( invested in campus course management app Super), healthcare (led a round of funding in menstruation period tracking app Dayima), mobile payment (invested in QFPay; joined another round of funding in mobile game payment service Mo9), among others.
Lightspeed joined the round of funding in Rong360 let by Sequoia China. Its latest investment is in a Bitcoin Trading platform BTC China. Earlier this year the company joined a massive funding round in online travel service Tujia. Other worth-mentioning companies funded by Lightspeed include China’s Yelp Dianping and e-payment service 99bill.
GOBI Partners invested in Kechengpai, an online training course provider focused on IT and design, in March.
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