Whole Network Most Recent TOP10 Entrepreneurship Innovation Private Equity Venture Capital

 

RREs Jim Robinson banks on SmartPay Day in China

Filed in archive Private Equity by james on August 16, 2005

BlogPicture
Jim Robinson IV, general partner of RRE, a New York based venture firm has recently made an investment into Smartpay. This company is the leading mobile payments service in China, enabling almost 350 million middle class Chinese to purchase pre-paid credits, pay utility bills, transfer credit and make purchases where the use of the mobile phone as a payment terminal provides compelling convenience.

"SmartPay is focusing on an enormous potential market (mobile payments) and has a unique position with its banking partners (tight integration with direct linkage to customer bank accounts)," says Robinson in an interview with ChinaVentureNews.

With funding from several venture capital companies, SmartPay has built a leadership position position in deploying mobile payment services since its founding in 2003 as a sister company of Linktone (Nasdaq: LTON), a leading wirless value-added service provider in China established by Derek Sulgar, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who knocked on many telecom doors before striking gold according to VC blogger, Ed Sim. Sulgar's company was the only American-Chinese high -tech company to float a successful IPO.

Under the terms of the new financing, RRE will take a minority equity stake in the company. Other current shareholders include: Accel Partners, Icon Ventures Asia, Lunar Group and others.

Despite these venture financing commitments, Robinson acknowledges that the investment road in China is not without risk. "The private equity / venture capital market in China remains in its infancy, which makes it both exciting and challenging. Naturally we hope that the regulatory environment will ultimately unfold in a fashion that is friendly to outside investors. But it is a risk," adds Robinson.


Advertisement


Permalink: RREs Jim Robinson banks on SmartPay Day in China
Tags: China  mobile  china  venture  capital  venture+capital  robinson+banks  rres+robinson 

Trackback: http://www.creative-weblogging.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.pl/8444



Advertisement


Advertisement


CW ToolbarInstall
RSSrss   | See all blog subscribe options
Googlegoogle   |   What is RSS?
Yahoo!yahoo
AddthisAddThis Feed Button
BloglinesBloglines
Newsletter
Advertisement - Book yours here.

Use our search feature to look for other interesting posts

Just this blog Whole network
  • ChinaVentureNews seeks news contributions



    If you are an analyst, tech company, private equity firm, service provider or entrepreneur with news to share related to China venture capital send us your relevant news release.

    CVN will post it to our site. We reserve the right to edit the copy because of space limitations, and to make summaries of the release when appropriate-- although a full copy of the release will always be linked to.

    Thank you!

    Please simply use our form here.
Advertisement -
Book yours here..


 
Advertisement
Book yours here.



  • Testimonials

  • 'Exactly what I am looking for.'

    "One of my favorite blogs."
  • Other blogs in the same channel in the Creative Weblogging Network

Advertisement -
Book yours here..






Advertisement - Book yours here..
 
Tagcloud: Agreement Blogs Book review Commodities Conferences Entrepreneurship Incubators and Science Parks Information Sources Innovation Internet IPOs Law M&A Mergers and Acquisitions News Outsourcing Policy Private Equity Sovereign Wealth Funds Sponsored Post Stocks Studies Technology Report Treatment VC and PE: education and training Venture Capital Yuan Renminbi