Official Record
Jungle Ventures secures TravelMob exit
Four years ago, Asia Pacific became the world’s largest aviation market, with 647 million travelers taking flights within the region compared to 638 million in North America. This growth shows no sign of slowing down – in the first four months of...
L Capital targets Chinese beauty
As growth slows in China's consumer sector, L Capital Asia has identified cosmetics as a segment with the qualities to withstand the broader trend. Put simply, as a woman’s disposable incomes rise, so does her consumption of premium cosmetics, particularly...
IMM taps Korea’s coffee cravings
Statistics alone do not capture the role coffee has come to play in South Korean culture. Starbucks entered the country in 1999 and it is now the firm's sixth-largest market globally by store numbers, with 556 in operation as of March and plans to take...
Cloudary halts IPO as Goldman, Temasek enter
Cloudary Corp., one of the largest of the largest online literacy platforms in China, has acted quickly to withdraw its IPO after receiving a new round of funding led by Goldman Sachs and Temasek Holdings. These developments took place in the space of...
India’s FlipKart shops a $200m round
Indian e-commerce is in a state flux. While penetration is still relatively low compared to developed nations - just one in 10 Indians has access to the internet - the industry was worth $14 billion last year and growing rapidly. Competition for wallet...
AVCJ China Awards: VC Professional of the Year – Lei Jun
Twenty years ago, Lei Jun joined Chinese software company Kingsoft and dedicated himself to developing its flagship product, WAP Office, a word processing system primed to challenge Microsoft’s mid-1990s offering. It lost.
AVCJ China Awards: Exit of the Year – China Pacific Insurance
“The transaction, the largest private equity investment in China to date, is a testimony to the maturing investment and regulatory environment in China and to the government’s commitment to financial reform,” X.D. Yang, managing director and co-head...
Carlyle finds the right formula for Yashili
Glow-in-the-dark pork, dumplings with aluminum, cadmium-tainted rice, and cooking oil made from recycled sewage are just some of the horrors that have found their way onto Chinese dinner tables in recent times. It is no wonder, then, that there is an...
Partners Group joins India’s IT crowd
Few investors need to be convinced of the wealth of possibilities that exist in India’s IT outsourcing industry. As of last year, the sector was valued in excess $100 billion with export revenues reaching $69.1 billion and domestic revenues of $31.7...
AVCJ China Awards: PE deal of the year – Alibaba Group
AFTER THREE YEARS OF ON-AND-OFF negotiations with Yahoo, Alibaba Group finally agreed to repurchase half of the US internet firm’s 40% stake in itself for $7.6 billion last September. Supported by $5.9 billion in financing, of which $3.9 billion was...
AVCJ China Awards: RMB fundraise of the Year – CDH Investments
CDH Investments did not get into the renminbi fund space as part of the mad rush for heady exit multiples on Chinext. The private equity firm’s involvement dates back to several years earlier and it owes much to China’s regulators restricting offshore...
AVCJ China Awards: PE professional of the Year – Homer Sun
Somewhat unusually for Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia’s (MSPEA) China team, the last 12 months have been dominated by buyout deals. Leading Beijing convenience store chain Hi-24 was acquired last November through a corporate carve-out and then two...
CapVent taps into Indian water market
Access to potable water is limited in India with groundwater in one-third of the country’s 600 districts tainted by high levels of fluoride, iron, salinity and arsenic. Meanwhile, tap water is mostly undrinkable.
Navis plugs into Southeast Asia energy demand
Southeast Asia's hunger for energy cannot be overstated. Of the region’s 600 million inhabitants, a staggering 160 million live without electricity. According to a report published last year by the National University of Singapore’s Energy Studies...
Angels say SE Asia ripe for 500 Durians
Dave McClure, Silicon Valley super angel and founding partner of 500 Startups, was on the road in Asia once again this month as part of his firm’s “Geeks on a Plane” (GOAP) tour. While this was not the first time the tech-focused venture capital...
FountainVest scoops top AVCJ China Awards
AVCJ China Awards: Morgan Stanley PE Asia’s Homer Sun named PE Professional of the Year; the consortium behind Alibaba Group’s buyback win top deal honor; Carlyle gets exit award for China Pacific Insurance
End of an era as KKR sells Seven West
With KKR's exit from Seven West Media, the two investments that arguably defined Australia’s boom market of the mid-2000s have now entered the history books.
Goldman exits ICBC as banks face squeeze
Goldman Sachs has toppled The Carlyle Group at the top of China’s exit rankings, with $9.85 billion in proceeds generated from its investment in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) against an initial commitment of $2.58 billion.
MGPA deal expands BlackRock’s Asia footprint
Asia Square, a twin tower complex in Singapore's Marina Bay, is set to be city state’s most environmentally friendly building. Designed by architects Denton Corker Marshall, it will house the world’s largest solar panel roof installation and the first...
Globis upbeat on Fund IV first close
When Japanese tech-focused VC Globis Capital Partners raised its third fund in 2006, it was against a very different backdrop. The process took just four months and the vehicle closed at JPY18 billion, JPY3 billion over target.
Phillip PE sees 7x return on biotech start-up
Inviragen had inauspicious beginnings. The firm came about through a marriage of convenience between two biotech start-ups that couldn't get funding: US-based Inviragen was working on dengue fever vaccine but had no capital for clinical trials; over in...
KKR, CDH near end of dairy value-add story
After months of conjecture, and even a regulatory disclosure outlining its intent, China Mengniu Dairy has finally built up a commanding stake in its long-standing milk supplier China Modern Dairy. Mengniu already owned 1% of the company and has now added...
Creador rushes to launch Fund II
“Despite our experience, and the fact we spent the last 12 years investing in India with success, I think a lot of people saw us as a first time fund,” says Brahmal Vasudevan, founder and CEO of Creador, recalling the difficulty his firm had in reaching...
NSL Renewable raises $90 million
With $90 million in funding raised over the last week, NSL Renewable Power (NRPPL) is looking to leverage the falling costs of producing power from renewable sources. It currently has 185 megawatts of installed capacity across wind, solar, bio-mass and...