Is China ready for Triumf?
Triumf Health got to know Chinese market in March 2019. We were honored to win a pitching competition in autumn 2018 at the 10th FCPAE Europe Forum & the 4th ASEM Cooperation Forum that took place in Helsinki. The prize was an acceleration programme Sino Track in Beijing, China.
Sino Track involves a short bootcamp and is organized by COMB+. You can see some of the activities of COMB+ from TechCrunch. For me, COMB+ campus seemed huge and their reach massive. But their investment focus is mainly on entertainment so we knew that we need to reach out to other Chinese VC funds in order to raise funding in China.
On the day I arrived, I met with Pirgit Laanpuu from Enterprise Estonia
She is the Trade and Investment Director in China and we had a wonderful conversation about e-Health and our plans in Asia. The rest of the trip involved the bootcamp activities.
Approaching Chinese investors
We were given a workshop by investor Philip Beck who gave the following advice for anyone interested in Chinese market or raising funds in China:
1. Get a Chinese name
2. Remember the very short attention span of Chinese investors – say what you have so say in 5 seconds or don’t even bother
3. Truth does not matter, it’s how people feel
COMB+ representative told us that most investors are unable to invest into European companies. Nevertheless, they base their decisions on how ready is the product, how ready is the team; what’s the amount of users. And most importantly, they want to see efficiency and drive. And as investors they are less patience and their expectation for return is much shorter. Furthermore, they don’t see „buying out“ as a feasible strategy.
Doing business in China:
We learned how to set up a business in China and how to recruit in China. It was interesting to hear that companies have three options in establishing a company in China:
1. wholly foreign-owned enterprise
2. representative office (not good for businesses)
3. Joint Venture (law is changing)
We heard that the market standard for recruiting is a 6-month test period followed by a 3 year offer. Usually only 50% of the salary is fixed and it is expected to have a 10-15% income increase every year. In general, we definitely learned a lot about China.
So are we going to enter Chinese market? Short answer at this stage is no. We are active in Singapore and see this more as a gateway to Southeast-Asia. We’ll see in couple of years if it is time for us to proceed to China. Once it is time, then we are well prepared for it!
Until then, I have many wonderful memories to cherish from my time in Beijing. I met awesome CEOs from all over the world and laughed way more than I normally do. I also accomplished a lot on a personal level and was able to cope with my fear of heights while hiking on the Great Wall of China. It was definitely a time well spent!
