CLP leads $21m Series B for China's Venturous Group
Venturous Group, a Chinese smart city platform, has raised USD 21m in Series B funding led by Hong Kong utility CLP Group. It follows a USD 131m Series A in June 2021.
Other Series B participants were not disclosed. Venturous’ Series A was led by Fidelity and featured family offices from Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe, and the US, as well as founder Benson Tan. Venturous emerged from Tan's family office and was formed in 2019 through a merger with Lioncrest Global, a platform that brings deals to family offices and high net worth individuals.
The CLP investment was announced in August 2022 as part of a strategic partnership with Venturous intended to explore low-carbon energy and digitalisation solutions in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). Venturous said it had sold a 5% stake to CLP. At the time, the Series B proceeds amounted to USD 20m.
Fidelity and CLP are the largest institutional shareholders, and Venturous “has its own IPO on the horizon,” according to a statement.
The company describes itself as a “citytech” business builder and investor. It backs start-ups developing technologies with the potential to make cities more liveable, sustainable, and productive. Smart buildings, smart energy, and smart computing are the main areas of focus. On closing the Series A, Venturous said it had launched pilot smart city development programmes in more than 800 cities.
Partnerships with the cities of Tianjin and Wuxi were announced in 2020. Venturous has also invested in 12 companies, including digital transformation specialist iSoftStone Group, smart energy management platform Anjie, smart hotel business Zhuyou Hotel Group, cloud invoice management platform Linxforce, and automated logistics provider CoEvolution.
Two of the portfolio companies are joint ventures: Neuron Digital Group, a digital building management business established with Arup; and SwanLink, an iSoftStone spinout part owned by Venturous and Wuxi National Hi-Tech District that is developing internet-of-things operation systems to enable seamless connections between smart devices.
"Venturous builds order out of chaos in the new complex digital reality. Complexity and Venturous are about revelations emerging from contrasts and opposites, like soft and hard, ice and fire, people and money, yin and yang,” said Tam.
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