US$45 Million will be invested in Israeli hi-tech companies by new fund managed by Shirat Enterprise
China – Israel Education Venture Capital Fund (“CIEVC”), will invest US$45 Million in Israeli hi-tech companies to encourage, support and bring Israeli hi-tech company’s products in to the market in China.
Fund partners are a large public Chinese company in the field of Education alongside with a Shanghai based Software Company and Education app developer with more than 100 Million users.
Shirat Enterprises is the Management Company and Co-Founder of the fund and will serve as its operational arm in Israel. CIEVC is planning to expand its investments to more hi-tech companies in Israel in various sectors such as software, ICT, media and internet.“We are looking for a combination of advanced technologies, creativity and new products to create a competitive advantage for us. We found many suitable technologies in Israel for this goal. Israeli companies are also very open in their willingness to do business in China. Yet, we all are aware of the numerous challenges Israeli start-ups have in entering new markets and can help - not only in resources – but in business development, connections and much more” says Jerry Zheng, VP of Shanghai based Wenba tech. “We are confident the fund structure in Israel and China will facilitate this, and our frequent visits to Israel and face-to-face meetings with companies will help”. The managing directors will meet with Israeli companies on a regular basis.The fund already made its premier investment in Israel in the world's leading game-based-learning platform for teaching children code - CodeMonkey. The funds invested in CodeMonkey will be used to expand its’ Research, Development, Sales and Marketing teams. The investment is part of a US$1.5million round of seed funding for the company."We are excited about the partnership with CEIVC fund", says Jonathan Schor, Co-founder and CEO of CodeMonkey. "CodeMonkey is designed to address the worldwide challenge how to teach computer language to children around the world and provides a feasible way to do so. (the) China market has a huge potential yet is challenging, especially in the field of Ed-tech. Therefore we plan to use our investors and business partners know-how and expertise in education based services in entering the market.” Added Schorr.
Original article was published in Israeli economic magazine Calcalist.