This Wednesday, I was in the London for the Essential Web. Thursday, after the Open Coffee and before I rushed back home, I spent 2 hours in a special conference, China Venture Captial & Private Equity Forum (Thanks to the David of EditGrid.com for giving me the badge and to Kitty, one of the organizers from Zero2IPO for allowing me get in).
I dont really understand how the VC and PE work, to be honest. But it was great to be there to learn the Chinese market from the investor’s point of view, and was glad to know the comments from the investors/partners are mostly very positive.
They did not discuss on the Internet market particularly, which I felt a little bit disappointed. Luckily I met David Zhang, Managing Director & Head of China, WI Harper Group, David Lee of EditGrid which just closed the Serie A funding from WI Harper and David’s partner Harry. A bit more about WI Harper here: WI Harper is one of the most active venture capital firms to create a value-adding bridge between the United States and Greater China. In the Chinese market, WI Harper’s star portfolios include Focus Media, Beijing Xinwei, 3G.CN, Maxthon and Verisilicon.
Let me finish this post by some quotes from Zero2IPO:
The first quarter of 2007 shows a strong record for the China VC&PE industry. The 67 enterprises received a total of US$418.95 million of venture capital investment, with the robust growth rate of 25.5% on amount from the first quarter perspective year-over-year. PE investments also topped Asia (excluding Japan) with US$2.49 billion in 38 deals. Additional, a total of 17 PE funds targeting Asia (including China) raised an aggregate of US$7.59 billion. The 14 VC/PE backed IPOs of China-based enterprises also help to persuade people that China VC and PE markets are in full swing heading towards a new era.
Isn’t exciting news for the Dragon’s web?