“There seems to be a revival of venture capital companies in Taiwan in the last six months to a year,” H&Q Asia Pacific (漢鼎亞太) founding chairman Hsu Ta-lin (徐大麟) said in an interview at his Taipei office. “There has been serious activity over the past year, which we had not see for about a decade.”
The revival reflects the growing interest of foreign private fund managers on local start-up technology companies, including US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
Sequoia has invested in two Taiwanese start-ups including artificial intelligence (AI) developer Appier (沛星科技) and Internet retailer Pinkoi, which sells local brands.
The government has allocated more than NT$20 billion (US$60.7 million) to invest in start-ups, and to finance mergers and acquisitions to explore innovative ideas in collaboration with private equity fund partners.
H&Q would certainly seize this growth opportunity, said Hsu, who is a pioneer in establishing the first US-style venture capital model in Asia in 1985.
“We are applying these kinds of funding from the government [to create our new funds in Taiwan],” Hsu said. “We will try to help start-ups and well-established companies to find new products and new technologies, as well as sponsoring new start-ups.”
That would be the latest move made by H&Q Asia, as the company forecast that the nation’s venture capital market would make a comeback after being quiet for about a decade. H&Q manages US$3.5 billion via 65 funds since its inception in 1985.
Breaking away from the traditional approach of seeking private stakes in start-ups for potential investment returns, Hsu said “H&Q creates a special way to do this.”
H&Q adopted an “accelerator” approach of incubating start-ups with innovative technologies by offering mentorship, access to technology, innovative community and funding, Hsu said, adding that the company in September set up a Global Innovation Center in Burlingame, California.
Selected companies from Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore would send pilot teams there to receive consulting and build up new companies, or launch initial public offerings, before returning to their countries, he said.
As part of the company’s efforts to refocus on Taiwan, H&Q revamped its Taipei office earlier this year. It hired a new general manager, Gary Wang (王崇智), to lead the “accelerator” program by linking Taiwan with Silicon Valley, Hsu said.
H&Q’s accelerator program entered the second phase, in which the company is holding talks with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to jointly select companies that have growth potential, Hsu said.
H&Q has identified six sectors with growth potential, including medical devices and wearables, Hsu said, adding that the company is looking at some medical device companies in Taiwan.
One Taiwanese company has developed a non-invasive way of detecting and measuring the blood sugar level, a technology that can be very successful, Hsu said.
H&Q can help the company recruit talent to develop technologies and help sell its products in the global market, he said.
Hsu said Taiwan has an abundant supply of gaming software developers, an area H&Q previously did not notice. These gaming talents are very useful for firms such as social media companies, he said.
These sectors H&Q are looking at are not like the traditional manufacturing sector, Hsu said. “In the globalized world, especially after manufacturing costs became so high, the profit margin in the sector shrunk considerably. Businesspeople have to use innovative products to gain a competitive edge.”
New technologies, including social media, the Internet and the Internet of Things grow much faster than the manufacturing sector, Hsu said.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
RSS