China's Domestic VCs Dormant but Not Dead

Filed in archive Venture Capital on May 24, 2006

While many domestic VCs have all but ceased their venture related investments and transferred to the advisory services, GuoCheng Venture Capital, a Shenzhen-based fund committed almost $38,000 to Seehaha, a company which specializes in providing software tools for China's emerging video bloggers. With over 400 million
cell phone users in China and over 6.1 million mobile users connecting online, it's no wonder that there are a few optimistic Chinese VCs.

The Economist's Global Technology Forum has not yet joined the ranks as boosters of the commercial podcast business model for China. Their views are far more restrained. "Collecting fees from individual users for space or use of software is out of the question for now, because the niche is so competitive," claims a recently published report.
While there are many popular Chinese bloggers and podcasters, some entrepreneurs like Blogku founder, Edwyn Chanbelieves that there is a future for the bundling successful blogs and even selling audio and video blogs to China's huge mobile-service providers. The blog industry still has its cheerleaders and some media observers have suggested that the number of bloggers might reach 50 million by the end of the year. No doubt this speculative blue sky projection is based largely on those Chinese crafting rudimentary home pages on Netease and MySpace. For more details on Chinese podcasting developments check out ChinaWeb2.0 Review. Jack Gu has identified some key trends from his website, Podlook.

The good news is that according to the latest survey conducted by the Hong Kong based, China Venture Capital Research Institute, that domestic venture capital institutions are gradually becoming more internationalized and professional.

Perhaps this rampant VC competition and the influx of more foreign funds might translate for more available risk funding for home- grown companies like Seehaha.