Singaporean venture capitalist Jenny Lee’s track record lists the biggest names in Asian tech, including e-commerce giant Alibaba, travel companies Didi and Grab and phone maker Xiaomi.
Yet Lee’s path to becoming one of Asia’s most prominent venture capitalists began in the hangars of the Singapore Air Force, as an engineer working on fighter jet engines. This hands-on experience helps her today as an investor, giving her a “common language” that allows her to talk to tech entrepreneurs about projects from their conceptual stages to their final deliverables.
Lee earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management right at the bottom of the dotcom boom in 2001. But that only encouraged her: “It can’t get any worse, right?” she says. She borrowed 300,000 Singapore dollars ($220,000) to repay the company that paid for her business degree and moved to Hong Kong to take advantage of China’s booming Internet sector. She set up GGV Capital’s first office in China in 2005.
Nearly two decades later, as the chief executive behind Granite Asia—a spinoff of GGV Capital with $5 billion in assets under management—Lee is ranked 33rd on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Asia list.
Granite Asia owes its beginnings to geopolitics. In July 2023, the US House of Representatives said it would investigate investments by US venture capital firms, including GGV Capital, in China’s artificial intelligence and semiconductor sectors.
Two months later, GGV announced it was splitting into two: a US fund called Notable Capital and a Singaporean fund focused on China and Southeast Asia.
In March, Lee took the reins of the now independent Asia fund, named Granite Asia as a callback to GGV Capital’s original name, Granite Global Ventures.
What is your strategy now that Granite Asia controls its own destiny?
Lee: We always felt that there was a lack of capital focus in Asia on Asian companies. You have a diverse area, both an aging population and a young population, climate change, geographic concerns, all that stuff.
With the rebranding, our vision is to become the dominant capital platform for startups, founders and companies across the region: the capital of the region anchored in the region.
How is the US-China relationship changing the world of investment? Do investors need to worry about political risk?
As investors, we need to have the ability to read the tea leaves. In Asia, the tea leaves are pointing to a very clear dichotomy. As we move forward, the world will move into a cluster economy. Today it is the United States and China. Tomorrow it could be a different area.
This is a pretty powerful game. Products have to be a little more nuanced, a little more regional and a little more country specific. It helps to bring in the right talent, attract the right deal flow and also achieve the goal that the country wants to set up. A one-size-fits-all fund will not work in the future.
The real consideration will be exits and liquidity, whether any political policies or actions reduce a company’s ability to go public, domestically or internationally.
Granite Asia is expanding into new types of financing such as personal loans. Does it better match what Asian companies need?
Enterprise class companies in Asia are moving into second or third generation succession. Historically, they have grown their businesses using local bank loans. But as they navigate the next 20 years, there is a willingness and openness to participate in venture capital.
How can they now ensure that the company transitions to the next generation with the right structure? It could be opening up the board to independent investors or venture capitalists who have the experience to help them grow. And maybe they will take on credit as a way to get to know these investors.
In Hong Kong, and even in Singapore, there is a generation where the owner may not want to sell completely. There is a gap between acquisitions and the tech-focused world of venture capital.
What opportunities in Asia are you looking at?
One theme is around health. We cannot rely on the West to do all the sequencing and drug discovery, because not all the discoveries will be perfectly suitable for Asia.
With geopolitics, a new opportunity has emerged: diversifying the supply chain. It could be producing IP in Singapore and the Middle East and then assembling in bigger markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, even down to India.
It is leveraging the global south and the wider Asian region to provide an alternative supply chain for businesses around the world.
The value of private equity firms in Southeast Asia fell 40% last year, according to Bain. What needs to be done to unlock investments in the region?
It is a matter of demand and supply. You need to ensure that Asia has capital at all stages of business development and growth to ensure that the capital is there when businesses need to grow.
You need to have the Taylor Swift of an IPO, which everyone is willing to participate in. But that alone is not enough. You need good publishers: startups from Asia who want to list in Asia. Founders probably want to be here: The brands and products have more appeal here. But if you don’t solve the issues with capital and investment here, companies can’t close the loop. Having a lot of capital, but no great publishers, doesn’t solve the problem.
Is the gender ratio in Asia’s tech sector improving? Are you seeing more female founders?
Yes, we are. I met an entrepreneur. She is in her fifties. She has been a housewife and housekeeper for the last 30 years. She is now an empty nester and therefore has time for her passion. She is starting a new food brand in the healthy snack space.
Diversity is good. Women leaders who were so focused on building their careers in big companies are now, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, getting opportunities to be mentors.
This article appears in the October/November 2024 issue of Fate with the headline “Capital of Asia, rooted in Asia.”
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
#Capital #Asia #rooted #Asia #Singapores #Jenny #Lee #rethink #venture #capital