The more you talk with Japanese VCs and entrepreneurs these days, the more you hear “China” as the next target for investing money or establishing a subsidiary. Now Japanese web behemoth CyberAgent (listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange) says it has set up a fund exclusively focused on web startups in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other places in East Asia.
The fund is sized at $22.7 million, which isn’t really big by Silicon Valley standards but a pretty handsome sum for a Japanese company. CyberAgent says the fund will be established early next year, with CyberAgent itself contributing a quarter of the total size of the fund. The rest will be kicked in by other companies, the majority of which are operating in the Internet space.
The target startups operate in the e-commerce and content production fields and can expect to get close to $1 million each once CyberAgent and its partners decide to invest in them each. CyberAgent personnel in Beijing and Shanghai would then be ready to provide some hands-on support.
The fund is expected to grow to over $45 million given there’s enough demand. It will have a maturity of seven years.
Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
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