China’s state-backed SME fund leads round for Tianyancha

The deal marks the first investment made by the government-backed vehicle, which is managed by THG Ventures, a venture capital arm of Tsinghua Holdings.

Operated by Beijing Jindi Technology, Tianyancha was founded in October 2014. It is a business intelligence tool, allowing users to search for corporate information such as registration data, board members, operating risks, financial statistics and intellectual property. It claims to cover more than 120 million businesses.

“Tianyancha provides a solution for investment managers when they’re conducting due diligence, particularly when they have to figure out the relationships between parent company and its subsidiaries, which save managers a lot of time,” Lei Lin, founder partner at THG Ventures, told local media.

Tianyancha previously raised a RMB25 million angel round from Chinese venture firm Tengye Ventures in 2015. It plans to use the fresh capital to develop new products and expand its market share.

The National Small & Medium Enterprises Development Fund operates under the National SMEs Development Fund, which was established in 2015 with a total corpus of RMB60 billion ($9.4 billion). It makes early- and growth-stage technology investments. China’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) committed RMB15 million to the fund, with the rest coming from state-owned enterprises, financial institutions, local government and private investors.

The vehicle provides seed capital to three sub-funds, run by professional managers, which are mandated to make early- and growth-stage technology investments. the National Small & Medium Enterprises Development Fund is one of these sub-funds. It has a total size of RMB4.5 billion and also counts Tsinghua Holdings and Nantong State-owned Assets Investment Holdings as anchor LPs.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Support services
• China
• TMT
• Venture
• Growth capital