The news is the Scaleup Dragon has definitely awoken.
Since 2014 investments in tech scaleup in China has moved by order of magnitude. Though it is not yet at the US levels, China managed to distance Europe consistently pouring in the ecosystem large amounts of capital.
The net result is China producing larger tech companies and approaching the US. Out of the almost 10,000 Chinese scaleups, 528 companies raised 71% of the funding made available to the whole ecosystem.
Of them 38 tech giants – what we call “super scalers” – attracted 38% of the funding made available to the entire ecosystem, this is a gargantuan ratio, over the double of Europe (20%) and the US (23%).
Three main big hubs are emerging: Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen that are home to 64% of the Chinese scaleups.
Hong Kong is definitively more a financial hub, actually the third tech financial center in the world, right behind NYSE and Nasdaq.
Armed with significant capital and development resources, corporate venture arms like internet behemoths Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com and their fiercest competitors are mostly responsible for the transformation of the China VC investment landscape.
The first wave of investments had spurred Travel, Mobile, Internet, and E-Commerce. Now Artificial Intelligence, Scientific & Engineering Software, and Edutech are leading the current and future growth in China.
Alberto Onetti
Chairman Mind the Bridge
Martin Haemmig
Co-founder / Network Partner Vidian Ventures / GLORAD
