Venture group SoftBank Capital closed a $250m fund.
SoftBank PrinceVille Investments, L.P. focuses on helping growth stage technology companies expand globally in challenging markets like Japan and China, which are attractive but often difficult for the lack of the necessary experience to compete there. The fund will continue to follow the strategy of previous Softbank Capital investments around companies in social media, mobile applications, ecommerce, online advertising, gaming and cloud computing.
Affiliated with Japan’s SOFTBANK Corp., a global leader in Internet, mobile communications, broadband services, and fixed-line telecommunications with presence in Japan, China and the Asia region, PrinceVille Investments is also backed by Chinese Alibaba Group and Taiwanese MediaTek.
In conjunction with the launch of the fund, SoftBank Capital added three new executives to the investment team, including:
– Kabir Misra, managing partner at SoftBank Capital and President/CEO of SB China and India Holdings, which manages Bodhi Investments LLC (a venture fund focused on early-stage technology investments in Asia and the U.S.),
– Scarlett O’Sullivan, principal, and lead for U.S. investments for Bodhi Investments LLC, and
– Matt Krna, principal, who joined from Investor Growth Capital.
Over the past years, SoftBank Capital has successfully exited from Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce.com), Hyperpublic (acquired by Groupon), Huffington Post (acquired by AOL), and OMGPOP (acquired by Zynga).
FinSMEs
07/02/2013