Highlights in our World of Corporate Venturing report, with a digital extract out today for subscribers, including our analysis of the Fortune 500 in conjunction with Global Corporate Venturing’s database, which revealed that 47 of the 100 biggest US companies are involved in venture investing.
However, while nearly half the top 100 of the Fortune 500 are actively pursuing corporate venturing, the picture is more mixed for the other 400.
The Asian boom in corporate venturing truly came of age last year. China and India were second and third respectively in terms of the value of corporate venturing deals sealed, with $10bn and $3bn invested by syndicates involving corporate venturing units in these countries. See graph of global activity.
This boom of emerging market destinations for capital was driven by large investments – especially those by China-based internet companies Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, which have also been highly active in the US. The world’s largest startup, Xiaomi, made it into the top 10 corporate venturers based on the value of deals in which it has been involved.
The data also brings out how aggressive Google has been, topping our analysis of the top 50 corporate venturing participants (see chart above), both by number and value of deals, with 121 investments worth $5bn. Google also backed those deals securing the largest E rounds, D rounds, B rounds and seed rounds, suggesting it is paying up to ensure it is involved in a large portion of future and present startup stars.
Our survey also paints a picture of corporate venturing as it stands at the beginning of 2015. In this survey, for the first time, Global Corporate Venturing has secured returns data on how units are performing in venturing.
Impressively 41.6% of respondents have a greater than 10% internal rate of return, while another 29.9% have a greater than 5% internal rate of return. This data suggests that many corporate venturing units are developing strong track records in the venture industry, which has been a notoriously difficult asset class for managers, with weak returns data for many participants.
We do hope you enjoy the report, with our subscribers set to receive a hard copy of the complete report. It has been a lot of fun putting it together, and we hope it will be the first of many such documents providing a snap-shot and guide to best practice in corporate venturing at the start of a given year.
Should you wish to receive a PDF and print copy of the World of Corporate Venturing, contact Tim Lafferty on tlafferty@globalcorporateventuring.com to order a copy or take out a Global Corporate Venturing subscription.