On April 23, the “China Investment Annual Conference 2015”, an event held by ChinaVEnture Group, a leading professional service institution in equity investment market in China, was held in Shanghai. Numerous investment giants in VC/PE industry, leading elites, key figures in the political circle, and business circle celebrities gathered together on this occasion. As a domestically leading investment institution in TMT industry, Meridian Capital this time was shortlisted in the TOP30 Chinese VC by ChinaVenture Group, ranking No. 18. Meanwhile, Tracy Ji, Partner of Meridian Capital China, also shared insight into the Internet sector, in which she summarized views on Internet industry, Internet+ concept and the recently hotly discussed topic crowd-funding——
“Judging from the environment of the venture capital industry, currently VC industry is facing fierce competition in TMT investment. On the one hand, after the “Internet+” concept was put forward, the market is very optimistic about relevant fields; on the other hand, the wealth effect in secondary market in turn stimulated investors’ enthusiasm, regardless of industry capital, industrial capital or financial investor, they are all rushing in, meanwhile the investment stage is displaying a trend of developing toward the front end. Meridian Capital China is a VC institution dedicated to TMT investment, in terms of fund size, it is not a particularly large fund, in terms of investment concept, we insist on conforming to the general trend, we fully integrate our professional investment ability with industry projects and human connection resources, aiming to concentrate our focus, and bring out our strengths.
In the aspect of investment fields, for mobile Internet, Meridian Capital China began to show concern from the second half of 2011, back then the business profit-earning model of mobile Internet had not yet taken shape, there was no appearance of many emerging companies like we see today. Nonetheless, at that time we considered that if we could make investment in top 3 or top 5 ranking traffic flow entries in segmented fields, we would see promising opportunities in the future.
Nevertheless, as the Internet industry gained popularity in the recent years, up till now it can be argued that this industry is already a very deep jungle, not only venture capital institutions are taking part, for instance traditional Internet giants such as BAT, and other industrial capitals, even A share listed companies are becoming involved, so how to stand out in the Red Sea? The moment to test the ability of investment institutions has come.
About the recently hotly discussed “Internet +” concept, in my view, firstly, this industry has big space, theoretically speaking Internet can link up everything; secondly, traditional industries will experience time lag when obtaining industrial upgrading through “Internet+” concept, traditional industries with relatively high informatization degree is faster in upgrading than those with relatively low informatization degree, because traditional industries themselves with relatively low informatization degree still needs a process of self data perfection, Internet may not necessarily be able to immediately improve their efficiency if it enforces direct docking; thirdly, buyer’s market has more driving power to improve efficiency by using Internet ways.
I don’t consider the high popularity of equity-based crowd-funding will pose great challenge to traditional VC. Just like in the age of mobile Internet, entries are very diversified, individualized needs can be increasingly satisfied. Contrarily, the essence of equity-based crowd-funding is universal benefit finance, aiming to lower the threshold of equity investment for the public, crowd-funding projects accomplish the main purpose of fund raising through this way. However, for enterprises invested by VC, what we offer them not merely stops at capital accounting for 80% fundamental function, we also provide 20% of post-investment services, as each enterprise has different needs, and we are able to help enterprises solve problems with specific target in mind, and accelerate their growth. Therefore, as we are in the VC industry, after all I still cherish expectation and confidence toward this industry; as investor, we face constantly changing environment, we need to embrace changes and envision the future with open mindset each day, just like what entrepreneurs do.”
