INCE completes US$700 million VC fundraising amid China tech crackdown

SHANGHAI : China-focused venture capital (VC) firm INCE Capital said it had secured US$700 million in commitments for two dollar-denominated funds, indicating global investors were not entirely deterred by Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on the tech sector. INCE’s latest fundraising got strong support from global institutional investors, including Duke University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, and Kaiser Permanente, INCE said in a statement.

One of the funds was oversubscribed and raised US$478 million, said INCE, which focuses on Chinese tech, Internet and consumer start-ups. China has cracked down on the technology sector over the past year and recently stepped up scrutiny of offshore listings by domestic companies, roiling domestic stocks in the sector.

“Despite the global uncertainty and challenging capital market, we continue to believe in the innovation, entrepreneurship in China and Chinese venture capital as a great asset class,” Edward J. Grefenstette, President and Chief Investment Officer of The Dietrich Foundation that participated in the INCE fundraising, said in the statement.

INCE “will navigate through these uncertain times exceedingly well”, Grefenstette said. JP Gan, founding partner of INCE Capital, said the fundraising success was a recognition of the firm’s ability to nurture fast-growing and great companies in the world’s second-biggest economy. INCE was founded in July, 2019, and raised US$351.9 million in its first dollar fund that year. The latest fundraising triples its assets under management to US$1 billion. Investors in the two new funds – INCE Capital Partners II and INCE Opportunity Fund – also include Commonfund, Unicorn Capital, Axiom Asia and Siguler Guff. Gan has over two decades of experience in venture capital.

His previous investments include Trip.com Group, Bilibili Inc, Meitu Inc and Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance and then merged into TikTok.

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Kane Wu; Editing by Himani Sarkar)