The Art of Corporate Venture

Blockchain technology is an opportunity to change the way we see illiquid assets of ownership including venture capital, with implications for all stakeholders, according to a discussion moderated by GCV editor-in-chief James Mawson.

Review of the GCV Symposium 2019 by Callum Cyrus and Jack Hammond, reporters

Innovative region: UK

Monthly analysis: May 2019

Winner of the CVC Investment in a Spinout of the Year: Ribon Therapeutics - Novartis Venture Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation–JJDC, Takeda Ventures, Celgene

The telecoms firm SoftBank has backed a substantial $300m round of gym membership provider Gympass, which is part of the beauty and fitness space, which has seen stable corporate-backed deal flow with rising valuations in recent years.

SoftBank backed online lender Creditas, a company from the alternative lending space, which does not seem to have experienced exponential growth in valuations.

India-based payment tech company PhonePe is looking to raised $1bn at $7bn-$8bn valuation from various investors, including Tencent.

In February and March 2019, we conducted a small pilot survey (n=31) of founders of businesses that have received corporate funding, which were referred to the survey by their corporate backers. We called it the “GCV Founders Survey” and it gave us some interesting insights.

Data presented by Martin Haemmig and GCV Analytics provided insight into the substantial growth in corporate venturing along with some of the major trends.

The top 25: Jeffrey Li, Tencent Investment