In 2016, Qiming Venture Partners, one of the most active venture capital firms in China, will continue to believe in healthcare.
As recently said in an interview by Nisa Leung, Managing Partner at Qiming, the healthcare industry – valued in the trillions of Chinese yuan – is an essential factor to grant the quality and dignity of life. But compared with other industries, starting a business in the healthcare industry is more difficult and challenging than any other.
But this has not affected the strategy ogf the Chinese vc firm. Qiming, which currently has four US-dollar and three RMB funds with over US$1.7 billion in assets under management, already dedicates 40% of these resources to investing in healthcare. The same Leung has invested over US$600m (approx. RMB 4 billion) in the sector over the past seven years in nearly 50 companies spanning biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics, healthcare services and information technologies.
Backed companies include insulin provider Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals, lung cancer therapy developer Zai Lab, cochlear implants leader Nurotron Biotechnology, Ebola vaccine developer Tianjin CanSino Biotechnology, and gene sequencing developer/non-invasive DNA prenatal detection company Berry Genomics.
Currently, Leung, responsible for the health care sector at the firm, sits on the board of Gan & Lee Pharmaceutical, Zai Lab, Novast Laboratories, Nurotron, Venus Medtech, Goodwill Information Technology, CanSino and Berry Genomics. She was also investor in Citic Pharmaceutical (acquired by Shanghai Pharmaceutical), OriGene Technologies, Shenogen Pharma Group, Beijing Richen Technology, Beijing Aeonmed, VR Medical, Wuxi Vision, ACEA Biosciences and other healthcare companies on behalf of Qiming.
In the only 2014, Nisa and the Qiming healthcare team made 12 investments in the industry, with an average check amount of US$10m.
In 2016, the firm plans to continue to invest in the sector following a “move slowly and surely forward” stratefy as Leung calls it. “Once a company meets our investment criteria, we will commit our investment without hesitation. We believe we will add more and more global companies to our investment portfolio.” she said.
FinSMEs
29/01/2016
UPDATE
29/01/2016: According to a regulatory filing with the SEC, the firm is seeking to raise a new $620m fund.