12 top Chi­na VCs you need to know who are mak­ing a transpa­cif­ic splash (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a two-part se­ries on Fundrais­ing in Chi­na. Check out Part 1 — 7 things you should know about rais­ing biotech cash in Chi­na — here. 

Mon­ey is rush­ing in­to biotech at break­neck speed this year, and one part of the globe is ac­count­ing for much of the uptick: Chi­na.

VC deals were teem­ing with Chi­nese in­vestors in the first half of the year, with Chi­na-based firms par­tic­i­pat­ing in US biotech in­vest­ment rounds worth $5.1 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Pitch­Book. For some per­spec­tive, that beats 2017’s to­tal fig­ure of $4 bil­lion — and we’re on­ly six months in­to the year.

This is a trend that start­ed last year, with Chi­nese in­vestors par­tic­i­pat­ing in a third of all biotech fund­ing rounds in 2017. Lo­cal in­vestors team­ing up with Chi­nese funds say the re­gion has an in­sa­tiable ap­petite for biotech, with mon­ey flow­ing less and less to ar­eas like re­al es­tate in fa­vor of the re­turns in health­care.

In a re­cent in­ter­view, Du­ane Kuang from Chi­na-based Qim­ing Ven­tures said biotech was the most ex­cit­ing new area for in­vest­ment.

“We had this phe­nom­e­nal run in health­care, from de­vices to tar­get­ed di­ag­nos­tics and late­ly we’ve spent quite a bit of en­er­gy on biotech — on the more in­no­v­a­tive drug dis­cov­ery part of health­care in­vest­ment,” Kuang said. “That’s one area we con­tin­ue to be ex­cit­ed about, and we’re like­ly to (ded­i­cate) ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er to this area.”

To­tal biotech in­vest­ment dol­lars are boom­ing like we’ve nev­er seen be­fore. In the first half of the year, we’ve count­ed at least 12 mega-rounds to­tal­ing more than $100 mil­lion. That’s in­clud­ing mas­sive rounds like Grail’s $300 mil­lion raise, which was stud­ded with nu­mer­ous Chi­nese in­vestors and led by Hong Kong-based Al­ly Bridge Group along­side Hill­house Cap­i­tal Group and 6 Di­men­sions Cap­i­tal.

With all this ac­tiv­i­ty and in­ter­est from the re­gion, we de­cid­ed to track down the most im­por­tant peo­ple you should know in Chi­na’s VC scene. We polled con­nec­tions over to the globe to pare our list down to these 12 in­vestors. Check out what we know about each be­low.

Sign up to read this article for free.

Get free access to a limited number of articles, plus choose newsletters to get straight to your inbox.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER