China's placid venture capital (VC) sector will return to the limelight this year driven by improved sentiments with the launch of a new board for start-ups and strong influxes of foreign funding, a leading mainland VC research company forecast.
A three-year depression followed the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000, but China's VC industry showed signs of recovery in 2003 with soaring investment and this year is going to be a turning point, said Gavin Ni, CEO of Beijing-based Zero2IPO.
Last year's VC investment totalled nearly US$1 billion, doubling the previous two years' figures, Zero2IPO's researches indicated. The company collected data from 55 of the mainland's most active VC firms.
In the first quarter of this year, 35 foreign and domestic VC firms invested US$216 million in 33 mainland or mainland-related companies, a sharp increase from about US$60 million in the fourth quarter of last year, according to Zero2IPO's quarterly survey.
