Alibaba-backed eWTP pursues $1bn in VC fundraise
EWTP Arabia Capital, an investment arm of the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) backed by Alibaba Group and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has raised nearly USD 1bn for an Asia-Middle East fund.
Jerry Li, a founding partner at eWTP Arabia and former Alibaba executive, confirmed the milestone in an interview with Bloomberg in Riyadh. Li said that China and Saudi Arabia were a good match, with the former offering technology companies looking to expand globally and the latter offering a growth market.
The firm expects to raise a new fund about every two years, based on the current pipeline.
Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) was launched in 2018 with a USD 600m anchor commitment from Alibaba and Ant Group. The stated goal, at inception, was to help companies expand internationally and drive technological innovation. Projects linked to the Belt and Road Initiative were of particular interest.
Now the organisation describes itself as a private sector-led, multi-stakeholder initiative to promote public-private collaboration and dialogue in support of inclusive global trade.
An investment arm, eWTP Capital, was also established in 2018. A year later, an entity called eWTP Ecosystem Fund started making investments in Asia, backing the likes of KK Guan, XTransfer in China, as well as Flash Express, Fuse, and Y.O.U in Southeast Asia.
EWtp Arabia Capital, a growth-stage investor based in Saudi Arabia and China launched its first fund in 2019. A corpus of USD 400m was invested across 16 companies involved in digital infrastructure, platform technologies, and cosnumer and enterprise services.
Thirteen of the companies are operating in the Middle East and North Africa. They include Saudi Cloud Computing, Saudi Arabia's leading provider of cloud services, and J&T Logistics, a local logistics provider. A further 20 projects, half of them in Saudi Arabaia, are currently being pursued.
In addition, there are plans to list three portfolio companies on the Saudi Exchange and two in the US next year.
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