Established a CVC subsidiary and established a venture capital fund with a total amount of 5 billion yen (about 320 million yuan), targeting global emerging companies.
文 | Shel
Exclusively learned that Japan ’s Seiko Epson Group established a CVC subsidiary on April 1 this year to provide investment and growth support for startups that may cooperate with it or expand new businesses, and promote synergies with invested companies Own business development.
In fact, Epson has been carrying out M & A and investment activities at the group level. The cumulative investment in startups in the past three years is about 3 billion yen (about 190 million yuan). According to public information, its investment areas include printed electronics manufacturing, print service platforms, and AI technology research and development.
In order to accelerate collaboration and open innovation, develop existing businesses and create new businesses, Epson Group established the CVC subsidiary “EPSON X Investment Corporation” to set up a total of 5 billion yen (about 320 million yuan) in entrepreneurship The investment enterprise fund, which takes global emerging companies as investment targets, expects to accelerate decision-making and investment, create synergies with various partners in existing business areas, and try to innovate in new business areas with new ideas that are different from previous ones Undertakings, activities that create greater value through open innovation through their own resources and technologies.
In the organizational structure, EXI uses Global Brain Co., an independent emerging company with CVC operational strength, as the GP, and Epson Group owns 99% of the equity of the Emerging Enterprise Fund. EXI can make investment decisions individually through internal resolutions. Epson Corporation has established an agile investment decision-making process and authorized the necessary powers to ensure its operation.
Source: Seiko Epson Group
CVC has become the backbone of the equity investment market
With the continuous development of the equity investment market, industrial groups have begun to achieve strategic driving, technological innovation, core business empowerment, and the layout of emerging industries through equity investment. CVC has become an indispensable part of the global capital market. Regardless of growth rate, investment scale, or industry layout, the pace of global CVC development has already approached IVC.
According to CB Insights “Global CVC Investment Report 2019”, inIn the past five years, the scale of global CVC transactions and the number of investments have been in a stage of steady growth. In 2019, global CVC investment activity increased slightly, with 3,234 investment cases, an increase of 8% year-on-year, and an investment amount of approximately US $ 57.1 billion, an increase of 3% year-on-year. The number of global CVC investments has also reached a record high in a continuous rise. In terms of geographical distribution, the number of investments in Asia exceeded that of North America for the first time, accounting for 40%, mainly due to the growth of Japan and India. From the perspective of industry distribution, the investment change trend of CVC is gradually in line with VC, and it is biased towards the most cutting-edge and most advanced technologies, such as the Internet industry, health care, and mobile payment.
Data source: CB Insights (drawing)
Traditional industries explore new boundaries through CVC
The Internet giant is undoubtedly the main force behind the rapid rise of CVC in the field of venture capital. Taking Ali and Tencent as examples, they participated in the investment of many well-known unicorns in China, and carried out a large number of layouts in their own ecological chain. It is undeniable that in recent years CVC has gradually become an important means for traditional enterprises to transform, promote industry development and accelerate innovation.
More and more large enterprises in traditional industries have begun to set up special investment departments or independent investment companies to integrate the advantages of R & D and IVC of large enterprises. With the help of market experience and risk prediction methods accumulated during the development of IVC, Reaching the mass projects in the market, by finding suitable start-up companies in emerging industries or technologies for strategic investment, providing them with long-term support, achieving cooperation and capital alliances with emerging companies in various fields, effectively responding to major disruptive and disruptive innovations . In the long run, you can also buy startups that are developing smoothly, and the genes and culture of the two are often more consistent than simple mergers and acquisitions.
It can be seen that CVC is not only an effective model for traditional enterprises to adapt to the competitive environment, explore cutting-edge technologies, and expand development boundaries, but also an important innovation for their organizational structure expansion and industry ecological evolution. Traditional enterprises can use CVC to keep abreast of the latest developments in the industry and form a tightly-connected ecosystem to achieve the goals of introducing new technologies, improving production processes, seizing new tracks, and acquiring acquisition opportunities.
Looking at the information, we found that many traditional manufacturing companies have already joined the wave of CVC, including Shougang Group, Haier Group, BAIC Group, Toyota Motor, etc. Compared with Internet companiesTo diversify their broad investment strategies, they focus more on industrial startups that are closely related to their business.
-
The Shougang Fund was founded in 2011 by the Beijing Municipal Government and the Shougang Group. Through deep cultivation of the four core industries of urban renewal, healthcare, supply chain and finance, new energy vehicles and mobility.
-
Haier Capital, established in 2010, focuses on the Haier Group ’s Internet of Things ecological layout and invests in five family application scenarios including smart homes, healthy families, evergreen families, happy families, and green families. More than 19 billion yuan.
-
Initiated by BAIC Group and established in 2012, BAIC Investment invested in new energy, intelligent driving technology, auto parts, travel and technology services, high-end manufacturing and others, and the fund management scale reached 300 100 million yuan.
-
In July 2017, Toyota Research Institute, a research and development department of Toyota Motor Corporation, invested $ 100 million to establish Toyota AI Ventures, focusing on artificial intelligence, robotic systems, autonomous driving, data and cloud. Technology, and its second $ 100 million fund is now operational.
Future trends
As an important part of the equity investment market, CVC investment not only promotes the innovation of the industry where the company is located, but also has the opportunity to promote industrial cooperation in cross-cutting fields. Under the integration of market resources, CVC institutions with different industry backgrounds will strengthen collaboration and further promote the application of information technology innovation in traditional industries. For example, in addition to setting up CVC itself, Toyota Motor has also joined CVC investment funds focused on AI technology development by some other companies, including Google ’s AI venture capital fund company Gradient Ventures and Baidu ’s artificial intelligence venture capital fund. It is believed that similar cross-industries in the future Cooperation will continue to deepen.
Written at the end
If you are interested in Epson ’s CVC, you can send BP to corp_innovation@36kr.com.
Not enough to see
The “Innovation Consulting” WeChat public account is waiting for you.
Scan the QR code below, or search for “Innovation Consulting” (ID: Kr8-36Kr-Innovation) on WeChat, and innovation will not fall behind.
