Adams Street Partners, which recently raised $426 million for a fund-of-funds vehicle, will look at backing early-stage venture capital fund managers from China and India, as it seeks to increase deployments outside the US, the firm’s partners said in an interaction.
“While we expect the majority of our deployment to be concentrated in the US, we have noticed an increasing amount of innovation and opportunity around the world and expect a great number of high performing managers to operate in non-US countries, including China and India,” its co-head of global venture fund investments and partner Brijesh Jeevarathnam, said in an interview with DEALSTREETASIA.
The Adams Street Venture Innovation Fund II, which closed in early-October and has been actively deployed throughout 2018, had received commitments from institutional public and corporate pension funds, high networth individuals, family offices and endowments across US, Canada, Germany, UK, Japan, South Korea and Thailand.
With regard to Asia Pacific, the firm’s Singapore-based partner Yar-Ping Soo said, China would be its single largest focus, followed by India: “A secondary focus is India. We are also actively tracking the Southeast Asian market. China has been a top hub for venture innovation over the last decade, with large gains in market valuation and value creation… Besides China, we are also active in India venture. We have seen India showing promise, but also some challenges, along the way.”
“One such historical challenge was a lack of liquidity for venture-backed companies. Nevertheless, we see promising signs of change with the emergence of global scale Indian companies and subsequent interest from US and Chinese strategics in Indian companies,” she added.
Edited excerpts of the interaction with Adams Street Partners’ co-head of global venture fund investments and partner Brijesh Jeevarathnam and Singapore-based partner Yar-Ping Soo:-
