Both the venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) markets welcomed a robust surge in September, while the VC investment focus turned to the educational market, the Shanghai Securities News reported today.

Last month, the China's VC market witnessed this year's high of over US$360 million in a single month, while investment in PE market totaled US$990 million, up 110.6 percent month-on-month, according to the report from Chinaventure, one of the most popular venture investment consulting institutes in China.

Compared with August, eight more VC investment cases were reported in September, with the VC investment volume surging US$129 million, up 54.7 percent from August.

At the same time, although only a total of six PE investment cases were reported last month, the average investment amount in each case totaled US$165 million.

The PE investment still concentrated on traditional industries. For instance, China National Bluestar (Group) Corporation, a chemical industry enterprise, alone gained US$600 million in investment funding from US’ Blackstone Group.

Meanwhile, the VC investment, conventionally focused on technology, media and telecom (TMT) industries, turned to education and training industry. A total of seven educational institutes, five in non-TMT industries and two in the network education market, reaped a total of US$124 VC investment in September.

In general, some 10 VC investment cases reported in TMT industries, amounting to US$139 million, far less than the total 19 cases, with US$226 billion in non-TMT industries.

(China Daily October 22, 2007)