Qiming Venture Partners, a China-focused venture capital (VC) firm that has invested in smartphone maker Xiaomi and food delivery giant Meituan, has set up its first fund to invest in listed companies, The Information reported.
The $500 million fund, dubbed Springhill Fund, will primarily invest in Chinese healthcare companies listed outside of mainland China, according to the report on May 25, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Springhill Fund has already obtained a licence from Hong Kong’s markets regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), in February and recently started operations, according to a regulatory filing.
Qiming did not immediately respond to DealStreetAsia’s request for comments.
The move by Qiming followed Sequoia Capital China’s launch of a separate hedge fund, Sequoia China Equity Partners, to bet on publicly traded stocks globally. The China team of Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital in August 2020 created the USD-denominated Sequoia China Equity Partners fund with an initial capital of over $300 million, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.
Qiming and Sequoia China’s march into the public stock market puts them in more direct competition with Hillhouse Capital, an Asia-focused asset manager that has investments in listed stocks, private equity (PE), and VC through a dedicated unit GL Ventures that it established in early 2020.
Founded in 2006 by tech investment veterans Gary Rieschel and Duane Kuang, Qiming currently manages $5.9 billion across nine US dollar funds and six RMB-denominated funds. With a focus on early- to growth-stage startups in the technology, media, and telecom (TMT) and healthcare sectors, the firm has backed more than 380 companies, over 130 of which went public on stock exchanges or were acquired.
As one of the top-tier VC firms in China, Qiming is among the few asset managers that have continued to attract big-ticket commitments from more risk-averse investors amid the global pandemic. In January, the firm announced the final close of its RMB-denominated Fund VI at 2.852 billion yuan (about $447.7 million based on the exchange rate of May 31). It also closed a new US dollar fund, Qiming Venture Partners Fund VII, at $1.2 billion in November 2020.
For the entire 2020, it recorded over 70 investments and public listings of 13 portfolio companies.