From DealStreetAsia
October 17, 2018 – US and Shanghai-based venture capital firm GGV Capital has closed its new funds at $1.88-billion, it said in an announcement on October 16. The new funds include $1.36-billion in the firm’s main funds, GGV Capital VII and VII Plus, $460-million in GGV Discovery II focused on seed and early-stage opportunities, and $60-million in the GGV Capital VII Entrepreneurs Fund consisting largely of company founders as LPs.
GGV Capital last raised $1.2-billion in 2016 across four funds. Earlier this year, it closed its first RMB-denominated fund at RMB 1.5 billion ($225 million). The latest fund brings GGV Capital’s total capital under management to about $6.2-billion across 13 funds. “We are excited and humbled by the support of new and longstanding partners such as CalSTRS (California State Teachers’ Retirement System), Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund, Rockefeller Foundation and University of Texas Investment Management Company.
“We also want to thank the founders and CEOs we work with for their dedication to building extraordinary companies, enabling the GGV team to continue to do what we love – support entrepreneurs and their vision to change the world,” said GGV Capital managing partner, Jenny Lee. Lee is one of the six managing partners for the new funds.
The rest include Jixun Foo, Hans Tung, Glenn Solomon, Jeff Richards, and Eric Xu. Founded in 2000, GGV Capital claims to generate an IRR of more than 25 per cent. It has invested in 51 unicorns across US and China, where half of these were Series B or earlier-stage companies at the time of initial investments such as Airbnb, Didi Chuxing, Toutiao, Slack, and in Southeast Asia, Grab.
Out of these 51 unicorns, 25 have gone public, such as Alibaba, Square, YY Inc., Zendesk. The VC firm said it returned more than $1-billion to its LPs in 2017 and 2018.
