Diving into Greater China’s Venture Capital Landscape
2021 Deep Dive on the Greater China’s Burgeoning Venture Capital Ecosystem
Over the years, White Star Capital has published reports on our core markets including Canada, France, Germany, UK and the US East Coast but in 2018 with our second fund we expanded to Asia, and subsequently also published deep dives on the Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia tech ecosystems.
Now, we are delighted to share our newest report covering the Greater China Venture Capital ecosystem. Whilst China is not a key focus market for us, given its position as the second-largest tech ecosystem globally and its increasing influence, not only within Asia but across the world, we believed that it would be useful to provide an overview for our investors, partners and stakeholders.
This report focuses not only on China, but also includes overviews of the rapidly growing ecosystems in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
In our report, we dive into the technology landscape in China and highlight the emergence of super apps, from players such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, which is a model that is proliferating beyond Asia. We also highlight many of the reasons we are excited to be active in the region in the coming years, including:
- China has the largest internet and mobile markets, with an ecommerce market larger than the next 10 markets combined at a size of $2.1tn in 2020
- VC funding in China has grown to a value of $50bn in H1 2021, behind only the US
- China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are home to 152 unicorns as of July 2021, behind the US with 374
The influence of Chinese tech players has grown significantly in recent years, so understanding their evolution and strategic dynamics isn’t just instrumental to understanding the China tech ecosystem but also increasingly their recent investments and market entry into Americas, Europe and South-East Asia. It also explains the increasing protectionism that is rising across US, Europe and India as a counterweight to China’s increasing power.
July 2021 marks the two year anniversary of the opening of our Hong Kong office and we have been extremely proud to back a growing number of impressive startups in Asia, including Asia Innovations Group, Flash Coffee, Himedi and Pop Meals. Our first portfolio company in the Greater China region, Asia Innovations Group, also raised a late-stage expansion round in August 2020 led by White Star Capital. We are eager to continue backing innovating companies in this region and hope our report can serve as an informative guide for other investors to do the same.
We hope you enjoy the read, and if you have any feedback or would like to discuss any part of our report, please reach out to joe@whitestarcapital.com.
About White Star Capital
White Star Capital is a global multi-stage technology investment platform that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, international businesses. Operating out of Guernsey, New York, London, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, our presence, perspective, and people enable us to partner closely with our Founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards.
Find out more about how we venture beyond at www.whitestarcapital.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.
