Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group is moving into China and has hired former SoftBank Vision Fund partner Daisy Cai to help it hunt down promising startups. According to a report by Bloomberg, Cai will run a team of about 10 investment professionals from Hong Kong and focus on Chinese tech startups serving businesses in health care, financial services and transportation, among others. Saverin, who is the co-founder of Facebook Inc., has also founded B Capital with former Bain Capital executiveRaj Ganguly in 2015.
As a general partner at B Capital, Cai is tasked with helping expand the young venture house’s global footprint. Cai has been appointed to help the company deploy some of its USD 1.9 billion of assets under management toward the country’s fast-emerging enterprise technology segment.
As per the Bloomberg report, in an interview, Cai has said that as the digitalization theme is going to play out in large industries and she is seeing a tremendous opportunity for technology companies servicing enterprises. She added that it is very similar to what the UShas gone through in the past 20 years.
B Capital’s founders including American venture capitalist Howard Morgan believe that there is no better time to scout for upstarts that could become the Salesforce.com Inc. or Oracle Corp. of China. Former Bain Capital executive Ganguly has even said that out of the 10 largest companies in the country, only Huawei Technologies Co. truly provides enterprise technology solutions.
Talking about Cai, she is a graduate fromBeijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University and before joining the SoftBank Vision Fund in 2020, she was holding a senior position at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Baidu Inc.’s investment arms.
While coming to B Capital, besides entering China, the firm is planning to continue investing in India and Indonesia as these are considered to be two of the fastest-growing technology hubs in Asia.
The company has recently led a USD 20 million Series A round for e-commerce platform Ula and a USD 53 million Series B funding for personal finance platform Payfazz in Indonesia. Khatabook and logistics startup BlackBuck, scooter and bike-sharing venture Bounce, delivery company Ninja Van and Bizongo are also backed by the company.
Source: News18