V-Capital, the asset management platform of the publicly-traded textile materials maker Jiangsu Huaxicun, and Hong Kong-listed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firm Weimob have joined hands to launch an industry investment fund specialising in data intelligence.
The new fund, dubbed “Beijing Weizhi Shuke Investment Centre (Limited Partnership),” has already collected 500 million yuan ($77.4 million), said V-Capital in a statement on Monday.
Two government-guided funds — Beijing Industrial Development and Investment Fund, and Beijing Sijiqing Agriculture Industry Commerce General Company — invested in the vehicle as limited partners (LPs).
The new fund will focus on investment opportunities in businesses that “have achieved a certain degree of commercial success” by leveraging technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and Internet of Things (IoT), said V-Capital.
V-Capital and Weimob have jointly set up the data intelligence fund after years of close collaborations. In April 2018, V-Capital co-led Weimob’s Series D1 round of 1.009 billion yuan, along with Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone (FTZ) Fund, Shanghai Guohe Capital, and Silicon Paradise Management Group.
“We continue to be optimistic about the commercial prospect of data intelligence against the backdrop of a digital economy,” said Guo Xin, managing partner of V-Capital, in the statement. He said that V-Capital and Weimob will strengthen their cooperation in project screening, evaluation, and post-investment management to provide investees with market observations and value-add services.
Weimob, which counts Tencent, GIC, and BlackRock among its shareholders, had raised HK$756 million in an initial public offering (IPO) on the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange in January 2019.
The firm’s adjusted total revenue increased 59.9% to 1.05 billion yuan in H1 2020 from 657 million yuan in H1 2019, after the COVID-19 pandemic drove up demand for SaaS products and targeted online marketing services. Its adjusted gross profit stood at 514 million yuan in H1 2020, up 40.8% year-on-year, according to its latest financial results.
Founded in August 2015, V-Capital primarily engages in venture capital investments, as well as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in sectors such as TMT, education, new economy, healthcare, new energy, intelligent manufacturing, semiconductor, and corporate digitalisation.
V-Capital has built a portfolio of companies including China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), a Tesla supplier; Pegbio, a Suzhou-based biopharmaceutical company that develops innovative drugs for the treatment of diabetes and obesity; AI-enabled medical imaging developer Infervision; and game firm iDreamSky Technology.
