On 5 July 2016, some 110 participants attended the panel and networking session with five renowned Singaporean and Chinese venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in China. Themed ‘Riding the Waves of the Future Economy – Opportunities in China’, the panel session was jointly organised by Business China and Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd.
Amongst the four Singaporean panellists were: Mr Foo Jixun, Managing Partner of GGV Capital; Mr Koh Tuck Lye, Founding Partner & CEO of Shunwei Capital Partners; Mr David Su, Founding Managing Partner of Matrix Partners China; and Mr Jui Tan, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures China. Together with Mr Zhuang Chenchao, Co-Founder and Former CEO of Qunar.com and Managing Director of Zebra Global Capital, the panellists shared their backgrounds and entrepreneurial experiences in China.
CEO of Business China Ms Sun Xueling was the moderator for the session. In her welcome address, Ms Sun said: “China has entered into a new phase of growth. The private sector is playing an increasing role in growing the economy. China for the first time is also investing abroad more than its inward investment flows. This provides new opportunities for Singaporean business people to seek new opportunities and partnerships with Chinese companies as they seek to expand in our region and the world.”
“The InfoTech sector is a fast growing sector in the Chinese economy with many exciting developments. Not often as well known, is that young Singaporeans have played a role in the growth of this sector in China,” she added.
Mr Foo Jixun noted that entrepreneurship and innovation were about identifying inefficiencies in the market and providing solutions. He cited an example of merchandises not being readily available in China’s lower-tier cities and this was one of the reasons that led to the rise of e-commerce. He also shared that while it was known that relationship or guanxi was important, it was also vital to be intellectual when collaborating with Chinese entrepreneurs.
Comparing China with Singapore, Mr Jui Tan remarked that start-ups in China first had to overcome the problem of scale in order to allocate resources and provide services effectively. In Singapore, however, the focus is more on quality. Start-up companies here can leverage on today’s technology to provide high quality products and services at lower costs and to penetrate the Southeast Asian market.
On how start-ups can grow and compete with the big names, Mr Zhuang Chenchao mentioned three stages that start-ups might experience. He said that start-ups were not visible to large companies at the initial stage. Despite a sizable growth, corporations would still not be able to understand the start-up business. As such, a start-up should build a strong team of their own at a later stage.
Elaborating on the same note, Mr David Su advised those who are interested in doing start-ups to keep a low profile during the early stages due to the stiff competition in China. In order to establish a strong team, a start-up has to be in “stealth mode” for more than a year. He also commented that not many start-ups were able to make it big and getting acquired by large companies might not necessarily be a failure.
On the future trends of technology, Mr Koh Tuck Lye believed that the Internet of Things (IoT) would be the next big thing after mobile internet. With the increasing number of active mobile internet users connected to multiple smart devices, “consumer IoT” could soon be the way of life. He also advised start-ups to look into developing applications or devices that would aid the advancement of IoT.
During the Q&A segment, questions posed by audience ranged from the importance of re-locating to China and the trends of Chinese companies investing in Singapore, to the outlook of B2B and B2C e-commerce landscape in China.
Chairman of Business China Mr Chua Thian Poh, Board Directors Mr Lim Ming Yan and Mr Tan Cheng Gay, as well as Business China Youth Chapter members also attended the panel session.