According to a company statement, China's National Small and Medium-size Enterprises Development Fund, a direct investment vehicle of the National SMEs Fund, has led a 130 million renminbi ($18 million) series round in Tianyancha.
The agreement denotes the first investment made by the fund. It was the second direct investment vehicle opened in Dec. 2016 by the National SMEs Development Fund. THG Ventures, owned by Tsinghua Holdings, managed the fund.
Tianyancha is a business data and investigation platform located in Beijing. Beijing Jindi Technology Co., Ltd., which was established in 2014, developed Tianyancha.
In 2016, the company launched Tianyancha. It facilitated users in searching for a company’s details and board members relationship. Company background, company development, operating risks and intellectual property are among the details users can search. As of today, there are over 120 million companies recorded in the platform.
"We first noticed that many investment managers are using Tianyancha as an investment opportunity filter. Later, after doing more research, we found that Tianyancha solves a big problem in the investment industry, especially in relationship discovery, saving managers a lot of time," said Lei Lin, a THG Ventures founder partner.
In 2015, the business data startup has raised a 25 million renminbi angel round from Tengye Ventures, a Chinese venture firm.
The National SMEs Development Fund was created in 2015. It had a size of 60 billion renminbi ($9.4 billion). The fund aims to create investments in innovative, early stage technology companies.
Last January, the National SMEs Development Fund founded its first direct investment fund. The investment vehicle was based in Shenzen. This has secured capital commitments amounting to a total of 6 billion renminbi ($870 million), 1.5 million renminbi ($220 million) of which came from the central government while 1.5 billion renminbi is from the Shenzen municipal government.
Many Chinese enterprises, particularly young ones, will continue to benefit from the investments of the National SMEs Fund.