Singaporean enterprise capitalist Jenny Lee’s observe file options the most important names in Asian tech, together with e-commerce large Alibaba, ride-hailing firms Didi and Seize, and cellphone maker Xiaomi.
But Lee’s path to changing into one among Asia’s most outstanding enterprise capitalists began within the hangars of Singapore’s air power, as an engineer engaged on fighter-jet engines. That hands-on expertise helps her right this moment as an investor, giving her a “common language” that enables her to speak to know-how entrepreneurs about initiatives from their conceptual levels by means of their closing supply.
Lee received an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg College of Administration proper on the nadir of the dotcom bust in 2001. However that solely inspired her: “It can’t get worse, right?” she says. She borrowed 300,000 Singapore {dollars} ($220,000) to reimburse the agency that paid for her enterprise diploma and moved to Hong Kong to faucet into the booming Chinese language web sector. She arrange GGV Capital’s first China workplace in 2005.
Virtually 20 years later, because the senior managing accomplice behind Granite Asia—a by-product of GGV Capital with $5 billion in belongings underneath administration—Lee ranks No. 33 on the Fortune Most Highly effective Girls Asia listing.
Granite Asia owes its begin to geopolitics. In July 2023, a U.S. Home of Representatives committee mentioned it could probe investments by U.S. enterprise capital corporations, together with GGV Capital, into China’s AI and semiconductor sectors.
Two months later, GGV introduced that it was splitting in two: It divided right into a U.S.-based fund, referred to as Notable Capital, and a Singapore-based fund centered on China and Southeast Asia.
In March, Lee took the reins of the now-independent Asian fund, named Granite Asia as a callback to GGV Capital’s authentic identify, Granite World Ventures.
What’s your technique, now that Granite Asia is in control of its personal future?
Lee: We at all times felt there was an absence of capital focus in Asia towards Asian firms. You may have a various area, each an growing old inhabitants and a younger inhabitants, local weather change points, geopolitical issues, all that stuff.
With the rebranding, our imaginative and prescient is to change into the dominant capital platform for startups, founders, and companies throughout the area: capital for the area that’s anchored within the area.
How is the U.S.-China relationship altering the world of funding? Do traders must be apprehensive about political threat?
As traders, we have to have the flexibility to learn the tea leaves. In Asia, the tea leaves are pointing to a really apparent bifurcation. As we go ahead, the globe goes to enter cluster economies. Right now, it’s the U.S. and China. Tomorrow, it could be a distinct area.
This can be a fairly dynamic sport of chess. Merchandise need to be a bit extra nuanced, a bit extra regional, and a bit extra country-specific. It helps to herald the best expertise, entice the best deal move, and in addition obtain the target that the nation needs to arrange. A one-fund-fits-all mannequin will not be going to work going ahead.
The actual consideration will likely be exits and liquidity, whether or not any political coverage or motion reduces an organization’s capability to go public, whether or not domestically or abroad.
Granite Asia is increasing to new kinds of financing like personal credit score. Is that a greater match for what Asian corporations want?
Enterprise-grade firms in Asia are going into their second or third era of succession planning. Traditionally, they’ve grown their companies by bootstrapping with native financial institution loans. However as they navigate the subsequent 20 years, there’s a willingness and openness to have interaction with enterprise capital.
How can they now guarantee the corporate goes to transition to the subsequent era with the best assemble? It could be opening up the board to unbiased or financing traders who’ve the expertise to assist them develop. And perhaps they are going to tackle credit score as a solution to get to know these traders.
In Hong Kong, and even in Singapore, there’s a era the place the proprietor might not wish to promote utterly. There’s a spot between a buyout and the tech-centered world of enterprise capital.
What alternatives in Asia are you taking a look at?
One theme is round well being. We can’t depend on the West to do all of the sequencing and drug discovery, as a result of not all of the discoveries will likely be utterly appropriate for Asia.
With geopolitics, a brand new alternative has arisen: diversifying your provide chain. It might be manufacturing IP in Singapore and the Center East, then assembling in bigger markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, even all the way down to India.
It’s leveraging the World South and the broader Asia area to supply an alternate provide chain to companies around the globe.
Non-public fairness deal worth in Southeast Asia was down about 40% final yr, in response to Bain. What must be carried out to unlock funding within the area?
It’s a requirement and provide concern. You should be certain that Asia has capital throughout the levels of firm evolution and development to make sure that the capital is there when firms must develop.
You should have the Taylor Swift of IPOs, one that everybody is keen to affix. However that, by itself, will not be sufficient. You want good issuers: startups from Asia that wish to listing in Asia. The founders most likely wish to be right here: The manufacturers and merchandise have extra attraction right here. However if you happen to don’t resolve the problems with capital and funding right here, firms can’t shut the loop. Having a variety of capital, however no nice issuers, doesn’t resolve the difficulty.
Is gender illustration within the Asian tech sector bettering? Are you seeing extra feminine founders?
Sure, we’re. I simply met a girl entrepreneur. She’s in her fifties. She’s been a housewife and a caretaker the final 30 years. She’s now an empty nester and due to this fact has time for her ardour. She’s beginning a brand new meals model within the wholesome snack area.
Range is sweet. Girls leaders who had been so centered on constructing their careers in massive firms now, of their fifties, sixties, and seventies, have the chance to be mentors.
This text seems within the October/November 2024 concern of Fortune with the headline “Capital for Asia, rooted in Asia.”
