Featured

New Funds: Saverin, WI Harper, Bliss Media. New Deals: GGV, Morningside, Bertelsmann, Matrix, Nexus

by Rebecca Fannin · May 24, 2016

Silicon Dragon News Digest [week May 16, 2016]

ASIA – REGIONAL
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has raised $143.6 million for his debut fund, which seeks to close approximately $250 million. The fund will focus on India and Southeast Asia, and will be run with co-founder Raj Ganguly, a prominent investor who has worked with Saverin on previous deals.

CHINA CROSS-BORDER
U.S.-China VC firm WI Harper Group, which focuses on expansion-stage, cross border investing, has raised $173.4 million for its eighth fund. The firm’s seventh fund closed in 2011 with $110 million. WI Harper also co-manages a $180 million fund with Innovation Works. Founded in 1993, the firm spans San Francisco, Taipei, and Beijing, and has made more than 300 investments, with more than 80 exits.

Filings show that Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, CEO of Chinese media giant LeEco, owned a 94 percent stake in electric car company Faraday Future as of March 2016. Faraday Future has been reluctant to release funding details, and the relevant paperwork is from a land purchase in North Las Vegas for a $1 billion assembly plant for the car maker.

Fitbit has launched two new products, the Fitbit Blaze and Fitbit Alta, in China through Alibaba’s Tmall. The e-commerce site hosted a Fitbit Super Brand Day to celebrate the launch and to encourage health and fitness across China.

What does Apple have to gain from its recent investment in Didi Chuxing? As much of the post-deal discussion has hashed out, CEO Tim Cook may hope that the investment helps to ingratiate the company with local regulators. See this timely New York Times article, published on May 17, on reviews of technology products sold in China by Apple and other big foreign companies.

In a recent interview, GGV Managing Partner Jixun Foo cites Apple’s investment in Didi, as well as Baidu’s investment in Uber, as examples of increased cooperation between the U.S. and China in technology. Listen to Foo’s appearance on CNBC here.

In a contributed post provocatively titled “After three weeks in China, it’s clear Beijing is Silicon Valley’s only true competitor,” Shopkick cofounder Cyriac Roeding documents his journey through Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong in an effort to better understand the Chinese startup world. He argues that Chinese startups move faster than those in Silicon Valley, that “cloning is just the starting point” for innovation, and that entrepreneurship in Beijing feels like a “raw, and sometimes more authentic” form of Silicon Valley. Read Roeding’s full post on Recode here.

Shanghai and Los Angeles-based Bliss Media has partnered with CODI Capital Group to launch a $150 million fund focused on international film and TV equity investment. This is the latest in a string of entertainment deals positioned to fuel increased U.S.-China cross-border content and distribution.

CHINA DOMESTIC
GGV Capital and Morningside Ventures have led the $32 million Series C funding round of KEEP, a Beijing-based mobile workout app. Bertelsmann Asia Investment also participated. At roughly 15 months old, KEEP claims 30 million registered users and 11 million active monthly users.

Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial along with CDH Investments, Sina.com, Hehe Pictures, BONA Film and Huace Media have joined in Series A funding of Taobao Mobile. This Hangzhou-based online movie ticketing platform raised $260 million. It’s part of Alibaba Group’s film and TV subsidiary, Alibaba Pictures.

INDIA
Apple has announced plans to open its first developer center in India. The new iOS App Design and Development Accelerator, scheduled to open in early 2017, will be located in Bangalore. The center represents one way in which Apple intends to expand its reach in India, by building an ecosystem of top apps to appeal to consumers.

While smartphone growth is slowing in the U.S., China, and Europe, India’s market is slated to continue to grow in the next two years. The country recently overtook the U.S. to become the world’s largest smartphone market, with an estimated 220 million users. At the same time, Apple’s share of the market has remained small, with about 6 percent of the market as compared with 22 percent of sales in China. The new developer center shows that Apple may be taking a more strategic and invested approach to growing in India.

Matrix Partners and Nexus Ventures have put $16 million in Series C funding into existing portfolio company Stayzilla, a Chennai-based online booking platform for accommodations. The startup currently claims a presence in 4500 cities, with over 30,000 rooms listed.

JAPAN
For an analysis of Japan’s budding startup environment, check out this post by James Riney of 500 Statups Japan: “7 Things Investors & Founders Need to Know about the Japan Startup Ecosystem.” He points out that while Japan’s venture and M&A market is small, smart people in Japan are finally joining startups. Nominated by Silicon Dragon, Riney was featured in Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 Profiles in the Venture Capital section.

MALAYSIA
Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the Government of Malaysia, is planning to invest up to $100 million in Fractal Analytics, a Silicon Valley-based global analytics firm. The firm provides enterprises with insights through deep learning and visual storytelling.

SINGAPORE
Singapore-based VC firm Jungle Ventures has recruited three operating partners: Michael Smith, previously CPO at streaming service HOOQ, and director of global tech initiatives at Yahoo; Gabriel Lundberg, previously at Spotify; and Tiang Lim Foo, who led Evernote business development in the APAC region. Each is a product specialist with no history of working in venture capital.