Global University Venturing

Every year it is a great privilege to pick the shortlist for our awards to the corporate venturing industry.

Founded in Cape Town in 1915, Naspers began as an Afrikaans newspaper publisher but significant expansion, driven by a highly acquisitive business model, has seen the business develop into a multinational group of media and e-commerce platforms with a presence in over 130 countries worldwide and some 19,000 employees.

Few businesses have made as big a wave as enterprise software producer Salesforce.com has over the past few years.

DLA Piper has a specialised international practice dedicated to emerging growth and venture capital, with 200 lawyers in the US and 400 around the world who specifically serve entrepreneurs, technology companies and venture funds by focusing on private equity and venture capital transactions.

American Express Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the eponymous financial services company, has tapped into what could be one of the fastest growing consumer IT investment stories in the past year, Instacart. Its move into the convenience grocery delivery segment has helped it win the sub-$50m investment award, highlighting new ways that financial services companies can strategically tap into the disruption of the retail sector.

In the last week of September 2014, the financial news wires were white hot as Yahoo and Softbank-backed Alibaba priced its IPO at $68 per share, initially raising $21.8bn, before the China-based e-commerce company reported that it had sold additional shares in the company, making the listing the biggest in history.

The meeting of minds between IT and healthcare is a strategic move that will help accelerate big data convergence in the wider healthcare and life sciences segments. New Entrant of the Year recipient DRX Capital has capitalised on this exciting investment segment with a fellow corporate venturing unit, potentially urging others to co-fund digital health investment opportunities.