IDG and Accel Partners, two of the world's leading venture capital companies, announced on Tuesday that they will jointly launch a US$250-million venture fund, the IDG-Accel China Growth Fund, to support China's rapidly-growing IT sector.
  
The International Data Group (IDG), the world's largest technology information publisher, and Accel Partners, an international venture capital business giant, will use the fund to invest in China's emerging companies in IT, health care, consumer technologies and other IT-related sectors.
  
China is now the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturing base. Emerging small- to medium-sized companies account for the lion's share of China's exports of electronic information products, which totaled US$207.5 billion in 2004.
  
"It's a perfect time for IDG to scale up its investment activities in China as we have been seeing an increasing number of larger investment opportunities," said Patrick McGovern, founder and chairman of IDG.
  
The fund will gather capital from leading institutional investors worldwide.
  
The fund will be managed by IDG Technology Venture Investment LLC (IDGVC), a general partnership which has been managing IDG's venture capital funds in China since 1992. IDGVC has so far invested in over 140 China-based technology companies.
  
"We are very excited about this new partnership as IDGVC is considered one of the best venture capital investment teams in China," said Jim Breyer, Managing Partner of Accel Partners.
  
The global IT market has been slowing down since the 1990s, but the Chinese market has maintained a consistently fast pace of growth. According to the Ministry of Commerce, sales volumes of China-made software rose five fold to 220 billion yuan (US$26.6 billion) from 1999 to 2004, while software exports grew 11 times.
  
The first venture capital company to enter the China market, IDG is optimistic about the prospect of future expansion with Accel.
  
"I have known Jim Bayer and Accel Partners for many years and I'm delighted that Accel Partners is joining us to invest together in these opportunities in China," McGovern said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2005)