Fengyuan Capital Closes First 800 Million RMB Fund, Focuses on Consumer
A new fund born in 2022, focused on consumer investment.
By Lili Yu
"An Yong Waves" has learned that Falcon Invest, a new fund founded by veteran consumer investor Fu Zheng, announced the first close of its RMB Fund I at 800 million yuan. The fund has already received initial paid-in capital, with signed commitments exceeding 67% of its target. Subsequent closings are underway.
On investment strategy, founder and CEO Fu Zheng said they will take broad consumer markets as their main thread, focusing on commercialization of frontier technology, manufacturing transformation and upgrading, and urban renewal — employing a full-cycle strategy weighted toward growth-stage investments.
That a new fund would still make consumer markets its primary track in 2022, when the sector was especially bleak, is certainly unusual. But the "consumer" that Fu Zheng defines is not new brands or offline retail in the traditional sense.
In his view, across industrial manufacturing, commercial services, home living, and numerous other consumer scenarios, next-generation consumer products will follow two trends: "needs a plug, has a chip."
"Needs a plug" refers to the clear trend toward new energy in products. This is especially pronounced in consumer products for mobility, production, and construction tools. "From scooters to lawnmowers, a new round of energy substitution is underway," Fu Zheng said.
"Has a chip" means consumer products are iterating toward greater intelligence. "Artificial intelligence technologies like machine vision, voice recognition, natural language processing, and even decision planning have gradually surrounded and updated our lives," Fu Zheng said. "Whether it's consumers' more extreme demands or enterprises' R&D drive to break out of zero-sum competition, consumer manufacturing is irreversibly entering a new stage that emphasizes experience and technological sophistication."
Beyond commercializing frontier technology in consumer scenarios, Falcon Invest is also watching manufacturing transformation and urban renewal.
Fu Zheng told "An Yong Waves" that even in this year's complex macro environment, the trend of industrial upgrading remains unchanged. Data shows that in April, high-tech manufacturing continued growing, up 4% year-on-year; electronic communications equipment manufacturing grew 9.7%. "This means there will be abundant opportunities in domestic substitution of core technologies and components, digital tools and products for manufacturing, and branding in manufacturing." Accordingly, Falcon Invest will focus on the overarching theme of "enhancing core competitiveness in manufacturing," tracking China's upgrade from low- and mid-end to mid- and high-end manufacturing, and the digital and intelligent transformation.
Urban renewal, meanwhile, resembles a "resurrection of O2O." In Fu Zheng's view, the past decade of O2O experimentation — from offline to online — kicked off the mobile internet era. Internet platforms have become the new infrastructure of the future digital world. The next decade, he believes, will bring the reverse: "another exploration from online to offline," or "O2O Again." In other words, the integration of emerging technologies like IoT, AI, and autonomous driving with offline retail, commercial complexes, and property communities will generate new growth in value.
Before founding Falcon Invest in 2022, Fu Zheng had extensive experience in dual-currency equity investment and capital markets. He founded Light Point Capital in 2016, and previously worked long-term at international asset management institutions including UBS and CVC Capital Partners. His representative deals include Yiyi Shares, Little Freddie, Hongrui Bio, Shui Jing Fang, South Beauty, and Jintian Pharmaceutical.
On this second entrepreneurial venture in the investment industry, Fu Zheng says his mission is to build long-term, top-tier investment returns. The firm operates a dual-headquarters strategy in Beijing and Suzhou to link resources in both cities for industrial synergy in consumer smart manufacturing and consumer-grade healthcare; going forward, it will also launch multi-strategy, multi-currency product lines to support full-cycle investment coverage of consumer retail and commerce.
Falcon Invest's English name is, of course, Falcon Invest. In English, falcon refers to a bird of prey — a symbol of sharpness and edge. "I prefer to understand Falcon as fierce and resolute," Fu Zheng told us.
Image source | Visual China
Layout | Yunxiao Guo
