In the same way that some Chinese cities are bigger than many countries, so Bejing’s venture capital (VC) industry is now bigger than Germany, according to data provider Dow Jones.
But while China’s capital might dominate politics and venture capital, one of the most innovative regions in the People’s Republic is Shanghai.
Between 2002 and 2008, Shanghai took in 29%, $2.8bn, of the near-$10bn invested by the top six regions, according to data provider Zero2IPO Research Center. This was about a third less than first-placed Beijing’s investment record but both outperformed in venture capital relative to their growth in gross domestic product (GDP) as compared to faster-growing provinces in China, Zero2IPO added.
Shanghai posted a RMB6.2trillion ($953bn) GDP in the seven-year period, slightly less than Henan province, which was not in the top six regions for VC in China. In its report, China: 10 Years of Vicissitudes: A Review of China’s VC Sector by Size, published last year, Yonge Qian at Zero2IPO said: "Beijing and Shanghai have overtaken the other four economic [provincial] powers to become the regions with the most active VC investment in China.
"Why? To answer this question, we have particularly compared the industrial structure of both municipalities with that of Henan Province, which ranks fifth by GDP.
"The result shows that both municipalities highlight the development of the tertiary [services] industry, with an obvious scale advantage. In comparison, Henan province depends more on primary and secondary industry to drive the economy. In addition, the governments in Beijing and Shanghai have acted earlier than Henan province to issue policies in support of the VC sector."
Zero2IPO said from 1999 to 2008, VC investment was mainly channelled into the tertiary industry, including information technology, services, biotechnology and healthcare, and clean-tech, which received nearly 80% of the total. This year, $110m has been invested in discount coupon company Lashou, which is less than a year old, and more than $500m provided to online retailer 360 Buy.
The demand for new business models and services has resulted in the number of VC members of the Shanghai Venture Capital Association (SHVCA) climbing to 133 from fewer than 100 over the past few years, the trade body said.
Martin Haemmig, senior adviser on venture capital at Stanford University and international adviser to the SHVCA’s event, Corporate Venturing in China: New Ways of Innovation for Chinese Corporations, said last month there was a greater focus on innovation in business models and investment in new services in China and emerging markets versus developed economies where the focus was more towards new technologies.
He said: "Many western companies struggle to make an impact in China because they do not understand business model innovation."
Local and foreign firms are starting to increase their investments through corporate venturing to try to cope with the changes in business practices and innovation coming from Shanghai and China more widely.US-based drugs group Merck said it was examining how to set up an early-stage investment unit in China, while wind turbine maker Goldwind said it was interested in corporate venturing as a way to develop more profitable business lines.
Corporate venturing in China more than trebled last year to $760m and companies invested nearly $2bn between 2007 and 2010, according to Haemmig, using data from Dow Jones. He said corporate venturing units backed 94 deals, 8.1% of the total venture capital market, between 2007 and 2010.
Two US-based companies were the most active in this period. Intel Capital was the most active corporate venturer with 20 rounds in Chinese companies, followed by Disney’s Steamboat Ventures. However, a third, International Data Group’s IDG Ventures, has been established in China since 1993 and has just raised $1.3bn in aggregate for an early and a growth-stage fund jointly managed with VC firm Accel Partners.
Haemmig, said his research using information from Dow Jones showed there were relatively few venture investments in pre-revenue Chinese companies. He said 3% of money went to start-ups or for product development as against 68% for companies with turnover but making losses and 17% for profitable companies.
By comparison, a third to a half of venture money in the US and Europe last year went to pre-revenue businesses.The focus on later-stage investments has coincided with a boom in flotations,with 183 venture-backed initial public offerings (IPO) raising more than $25bn on Chinese stock exchanges in 2009 and 2010.
Delegates at the event said their biggest concern was that the rush by corporations and other investors to back pre-IPO companies was driving up prices and fuelling a bubble as the authorities had limited the capital that could flowinto property speculation and the stock markets directly.
Anecdotally, prices for such growth equity deals are about 15 times current earnings, investors said, revenue and profit rises at portfolio companies has to remain strong and investors willing to back initial public offerings.
Haemmig said over the next two to five years there would be a "massive change" in the type of exit, with an increase in acquisitions by foreign companies and local companies also trying to move beyond manufacturing into innovation through alliances and takeovers.
Max von Zedtwitz said China and India had taken about half of all new research and development centres in the past decade. China had more than 1,200 foreign-owned research and development (R&D) centres in China in 2009, he added. This growth means most of the centres are on average about three to four years old, but it normally requires eight to 10 years for an R&D centre to become fully functional.
Corporate venturers taking a longer-term view will assume there will be substantial product and technical innovation to come out of these centres and many are positioning themselves for this.However, cultural factors are likely to be an issue to manage. Von Zedtwitz said the three challenges in China to manage about corporate development were staff turnover, managing and enforcing intellectual property rights and developing open innovation between companies.
For foreign firms there is also the challenge of state policies designed to see their eventual obsolescence.China’s venture capital industry has followed the same path as the country’s general industrial policy of building capacity and then replacing foreign products.
John Chiang, professor at the Department of Technology Management and director of the Global Innovation Research Center at Peking University, in a talk at the SHVCA event, said China’s economy had gone from total ruins to the world’s second-biggest within 30 years – with its average 10% annual growth in GDP expected to fall to 8.4% over the next two years, according to the International Monetary Fund – and local currency venture funds had exceed US dollar-denominated funds in 2009 and now made up 90% of current fundraisings.
He said the replacement of foreign venture funds was less controversial than for other products but part of the larger national innovation drive by China.
Chiang said, in his talk on the Status of Government Rules and Regulations for Corporate Venture Capital and Venture Capital in China, making and sourcing products in the nation was well-established but creating local innovation partnership was "the big opportunity, but more challenging".
He said large corporations did not buy from start-ups unless they had at least $50m in revenues and when they took equity through corporate venturing they wanted a large say in the portfolio company’s strategy.
He said, therefore, that in Chinese venture capital, "everything is possible, but nothing is easy".