Jack Ma’s Complete Exit from AlibabaVentures

China POTION
8 min readApr 13, 2020

Teacher Ma’s every move still affects the rivers and lakes.

According to the investment community (ID: pedaily2012), on the evening of April 9, Ray Media and Yuantong Express issued a notice of change in shareholder equity, saying that Ma Yun and Xie Shihuang transferred all the equity they held to Alibaba to Hangzhou Zhenxi After the equity transfer is completed, Hangzhou Zhenxi will hold 100% equity of Alibaba Ventures.

Prior to this, Ma Yun held 80% of Alibaba Ventures, Alibaba co-founder Xie Shihuang held 20%, and the two transferred their shares to Hangzhou Zhenxi. At this point, Ma Yun fully cleared Ali Venture Capital shares and officially withdrew.

Why did Jack Ma withdraw from Alibaba Ventures at this time? Alibaba official responded that this move is to cooperate with the optimization and adjustment of Alibaba’s internal structure, to enhance the equity stability and appropriateness of governance of Alibaba Ventures. The actual control relationship of Alibaba Ventures has not changed, and it is still an enterprise within Alibaba Group.

In fact, since Ali CFO Wuwei succeeded Cai Chongxin in June 2019, Ali Strategic Investment has been quietly adjusting. Despite the fact that Alibaba’s war investment of 18 billion yuan has been called a CVC myth, the slowdown in investment in 2020 has become a topic that cannot be avoided.

Accompanying 14 years, Ma Yun withdrew from Ali Ventures

Ma Yun once again delivered the baton and officially withdrew from Ali Ventures.

Yesterday evening, A-share listed company Ray Media, Yuantong Express and other disclosed that one of its shareholders, Hangzhou Ali Venture Capital Co., Ltd. (Alibaba Ventures), changed its direct shareholders from natural persons to limited liability companies.

Prior to this, Ali Ventures was held by individual shareholders, of which Ma Yun accounted for 80% of Ali Ventures and Alibaba co-founder Xie Shihuang accounted for 20% of Ali Ventures. On April 9, Ali Mayun and Xie Shihuang planned to transfer their equity in Ali Venture Capital to Hangzhou Zhenxi Investment Management Co., Ltd. (referred to as Hangzhou Zhenxi).

After the transaction is completed, Hangzhou Zhenxi will hold 100% equity of Alibaba Ventures. Ma Yun all cleared Ali Ventures and formally withdrew . As mentioned in the equity transfer agreement, as the consideration for the equity transfer, Hangzhou Zhenxi should pay 208 million yuan to Ma Yun and 52 million yuan to Xie Shihuang.

The agreement also emphasized in particular: after this equity change, the actual control relationship of Alibaba Ventures has not changed, and it is still an enterprise within the Alibaba Group. Ma Yun stated in the equity change book that this move is to cooperate with the optimization and adjustment of Ali’s internal structure, enhance the equity stability and appropriateness of governance of Ali Ventures, and promote the institutionalization of the governance structure.

At this point, Hangzhou Zhenxi will hold 100% of Xiali Venture Capital, in addition, the company will also 100% hold Zhejiang Tmall Network Co., Ltd., Hangzhou Ali Technology Co., Ltd., Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., Ltd., Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Hangzhou Alibaba Advertising Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Taobao Network Co., Ltd.

According to the information of Tianyancha, Alibaba Ventures was established in October 2006 with a registered capital of 260 million. Its predecessor was Hangzhou Alibaba Network Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. It was changed to Alibaba Ventures in 2008. In addition, Alibaba Ventures has changed its legal person several times, Ma Yun, Lu Zhaoxi (2014), Zhang Yong (2016), in March 2019, Alibaba Ventures changed its business information again, and Alibaba ’s B2B business group president Dai Shan took over as the legal person and chairman .

Prior to this, Hangzhou Zhenxi had a wholly-owned subsidiary, Hangzhou Alibaba Ventures (ie Hangzhou Alibaba Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd.). Has Hangzhou Alibaba Ventures ever invested in Hungry, Koala Haigou, Yohou Mutual Entertainment, Teambtion And other companies.

Demystifying the most complete investment territory of Ali Ventures

In the investment circle, Ali Ventures has attracted attention because of the multiple star cases.

In addition to Light Media and Yuantong Express, Ali Ventures’ investment cases also include Huayi Brothers, Liren Lizhuang, Xiaopeng Auto, New Studio, Ink Weather, Best Logistics, etc., and have participated in the mixed reform of China Unicom.

According to the information from Tianyan, Alibaba Ventures has made a total of 55 foreign investments, as follows:

Just before Ma Yun announced his withdrawal, Alibaba Ventures had just cashed out 560 million and continuously reduced its holdings in Optical Media. In this announcement, Ray Media stated that the reduction of shares held by Ali Ventures is the non-publicly issued shares of the company to Ali Ventures in 2015 (including the part of the implementation of the conversion of capital reserves to share capital due to equity distribution after the non-public issuance of shares). The holding frequency is 7 times.

For this shareholding reduction plan, Ali Ventures has been in full swing for at least 6 months. On December 23, 2019, Ray Media announced that Ali Ventures had completed a partial reduction of its holdings, totaling more than 260 million yuan in cash. Since then, Ali Ventures’ selling plan has been ongoing.

However, when Alibaba Ventures completed a series of plans to reduce its holdings in Light Media, it plans to acquire a 60% stake in Galaxy Cool Entertainment for 400 million yuan, which means that Alibaba ’s cultural footprint continues to expand.

When investing in Xiaopeng Auto, the Alibaba Group also entered the field of car manufacturing through Alibaba Ventures . In December 2017, Xiaopeng Automobile announced that it has completed three rounds of A + round financing, and Ali funds also participated in this round of financing-industrial and commercial information shows that Ali Venture Capital Guangzhou Orange Bank Zhidong Company shares 10.03% of the shares, subscribed The company has registered assets of 2.02 million yuan.

However, Ali Ventures, which holds many star projects, has also encountered “stumbling blocks.” In October 2019, the ink weather will be rejected, once again dream of breaking A shares. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the actual controller of the company, Jin Li, the second largest shareholder of the company, the second largest shareholder of the company, is Alibaba Ventures. The company has experienced seven rounds of financing but has been unable to IPO.

CVC giant’s 2020: Tencent sweeps goods, Ali brakes

In the venture capital circle, Alibaba has always been so popular that it has built an indispensable CVC empire.

Alibaba Ventures is not the only one responsible for the investment of Alibaba . Alibaba has multiple investment platforms . Alibaba Capital was established in 2008. The starting point at the time was to make financial investments. Until 2013, Alibaba undertook a difficult organizational change, and the strategic investment department that was previously scattered in various business divisions and the independent Alibaba Capital were placed together under “ Alibaba Group Investment Department. “

In April of this year, Cai Chongxin began to be mainly responsible for the group’s strategic investment. Ali’s investment strategy also began to transform from a financial investment to a complete strategic investment. To a certain extent, Alibaba Capital has undertaken most of the strategic investment tasks of Alibaba Group. The investment fields are very wide, such as e-commerce, corporate services, entertainment media, local life, automobile transportation, tool software, logistics and hardware.

In addition, Alibaba also has Zetai Information, which is mainly involved in mature projects such as fixed-income and mergers and acquisitions; Alibaba Taiwan Venture Capital, a subsidiary of Alibaba, has initiated the establishment of Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund and so on.

For a long time in the past, the soul of Ali’s war investment was Cai Chongxin, who formed Ali Strategic Investment Department in one hand. Since Alibaba CFO Wuwei took over from Cai Chongxin in June 2019 and provoked the head of Alibaba Group’s strategic investment department, the adjustment of Alibaba’s war investment has been advancing.

According to a later report, at the end of last year, Ali Ward conducted a new round of organizational upgrades-adjusted to three teams under the head of Wu Wei, the corresponding key figures: Chen Jun, who is fully responsible for domestic investment business; Yao Yunren, Ali institutions The person in charge of the financing department will be fully responsible for Ali’s international investment business; Zhang Feiyan, one of the earliest members of the Ali war investment department, is responsible for the management of the middle and back office.

More important is the adjustment in the strategic direction: “ The investment of the war investment department will be closer to the business next. If the strategic cooperation of the projects invested in the past is not great, it will slowly withdraw in the future. “

In September 2019, Wu Wei released important data: Alibaba’s strategic investment is worth about 83 billion U.S. dollars. As of now, Alibaba has withdrawn from more than 50 investment projects and realized investment income of 18 billion yuan.

However, the investment community has noticed that since 2020, the investment rate of CVC Ali has significantly slowed down. There are only a few public investment events such as Xunyun Technology, Shihui Tuan, and Indian company Bigbasket, as well as the proposed acquisition of Galaxy Cool Entertainment 60 million. % Equity.

In contrast, Ali’s old rival Tencent Investment, like Sequoia Capital China Fund, intensively countered the trend, successively increased holdings, holding Huya, leading Mingluo Technology, investment ape counseling, etc., surging in the undercurrent ‘S online music platform market, Tencent’s investment in Universal Music has finally come to an end.

According to the information from Tianyancha , from 2020 to now, Tencent has sold 31 companies, while Ali has only three.

Looking back on China’s venture capital for 20 years, CVC investment took advantage of the rapid development of the Internet, even if it was also caught in the winter of the first venture capital circle in 2002 and affected by the wave of PE in 2010, but CVC investment has always been at its own pace in.

This time, when many VC / PE organizations cherish the slowdown of the bullets in their hands, Tencent and Ali seem to choose different paths.

🇨🇳This original English article was published by ChinaPotion. Please contact us for any deeper insight & data; or to report unique tech stories in China.

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