The existing EU-China cross-border acceleration platform of Medical Valley and Convergence Partners is further strengthened through a strategic partnership with Greenland Health, the healthcare division of Chinese real estate giant Greenland Group. The parties aim to establish a joint China landing hub to support European Healthcare innovators and a venture capital fund to finance their local scale-up.
Existing commercial channels for European healthcare companies
Greenland Health and its holding company Greenland Hong Kong Holdings Limited (SEHK: 00337), are part of Greenland Group, ranking 176th in the Global Fortune 500 list of companies (2020). The company is dedicated to setting the gold standard for high quality and affordable healthcare delivery. As part of this strategy, it has started to establish and operate cutting-edge rehabilitation and elderly care facilities in Tier 1 cities in China. One current landmark project is the creation of the “Greenland H1 Health City” in Kunming, which covers an area of about 310 ha., with a total investment of more than RMB 40 billion including core medical, recreational and healthcare facilities. In addition, several new large scale healthcare industrial parks are being built across the country. “The alliance with Greenland Health will open up significant sales channels for our European healthcare companies, both young and established, leveraging Greenland`s own ambitious healthcare investment plans, and enabling access to nearly 40m potential customers through their commercial and residential properties” comments Jörg Trinkwalter, CEO of Medical Valley.
China joint venture and RMB Fund to support landing and scale-up
The parties will form a joint venture to establish a comprehensive China landing operation that will support all aspects of market entry and subsequent scale-up of European healthcare companies, ranging from market assessment studies, IP protection strategy – and regulatory approval support to establishing local licensing partnerships and production facilities. The joint venture will also help entrepreneurs to evaluate IPO listings at one of the dedicated tech stock exchanges in Hongkong, Shenzhen or Shanghai, capitalising on the significant valuation differential between Europe and China. To complement these activities, the parties will form a joint Chinese local currency RMB Fund to finance the Chinese entities of European healthcare companies. “Funding ability in China completes our cross-border acceleration model and adds to the existing Europe funding and cross-border development capabilities.” adds Ke Zhang, one of the Founding Partners at Convergence.
First success stories
Formed last year, the Medical Valley-Convergence (`MVC`) cross-border acceleration platform, is already yielding the first positive results. One example is the establishment of a China subsidiary of Medical Valley member company Nice! Innovations, which will license several European specialist orthopaedics medical devices to the Chinese market. The company was able to secure a RMB 4.5m grant funding from Hangzhou local government to kickstart the local setup and is now in discussions with several local investors and licensing partners from Convergence` extensive corporate network in China. The MVC platform is currently supporting the China market entry of an additional 6 EU tech innovators, 4 of which have secured a combined RMB 18m grant funding from local governments through the platform. A solid pipeline of scale-up opportunities for 2021 is in active preparation.
Press Contact:
Yvonne Dauer
Medical Valley EMN e.V. – Public Relations
+49 9131-91617-58
yvonne.dauer@medical-valley-emn.de
About Medical Valley EMN
The Medical Valley European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg (EMN) Association is a leading healthcare management cluster in Europe. Highly specialized research institutions, internationally leading companies as well as many growing companies are active here. They cooperate closely to jointly find solutions for the challenges of healthcare today and tomorrow. This extraordinary concentration of players, combined with the international market and competitive position of individual players, the unique infrastructure and services, all provide the conditions that allow ideas to be turned into products, processes and services more quickly. The nationally and internationally outstanding position of this leading economic region was additionally strengthened in January 2010 by the designation of “National Top Cluster” for medical technology by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In April 2017, Medical Valley, in cooperation with the Zollhof Tech Incubator and the Health Hackers, was named one of twelve national “Digital Hubs” by the Federal Ministry of Economics – the only one that focuses exclusively on healthcare. Existing hubs of the urban-rural cluster Medical Valley EMN e. V. are the Medical Valley Center Erlangen, Forchheim, Amberg-Weiden and Bamberg.
About Convergence Partners
Convergence Partners is an international venture capital firm with investment focus on HealthTech start-ups in Europe. The firm is headquartered in Switzerland, with additional offices in Germany and Spain and several hubs across China. An extensive network of industrial partners, research institutions and start-up accelerators in China, India and Southeast Asia help Convergence` portfolio companies realize the significant market potential in Asia. In addition to growth funding, Convergence supports technology innovators in all aspects of internationalization, from initial market assessment to the establishment of local branches and production facilities, pursuing a demand-driven `market-first` approach.
About Greenland Hong Kong Holdings Ltd
Greenland Hong Kong Holdings Limited (SEHK: 00337) is a holding subsidiary of the Greenland Group, part of the Top 500 Groups in the world. Greenland Holdings Co., Ltd. is a diversified enterprise with global business. In the past 27 years since its inception, Greenland has cultivated a multilateral layout of “real estate development as the main business, associated with the other fields of large infrastructure, large finance, large consumption, health care industry, and science and technology” in the world. The industry has developed a multi-faceted structure and firmly implemented the capitalization, publicization, and international development strategy, expanding its business in more than 30 countries globally, and achieving the listing of domestic A-share (600606.SH) and a number of Hong Kong-listed companies, as well as building a capital platform for the integration of domestic and overseas resources. Since its first entry of the Top 500 Companies in 2012, Greenland Group has ranked on for seven consecutive years, and has been the top one as the real estate company in the world’s Top 500 Companies.
Greenland Hong Kong, as the only international window for Greenland Group’s overseas listed real estate platform and brand display, deepens the promotion of “real estate +” strategy. The development projects cover more than 10 cities in 9 provinces across the country, centering on “medical health, business travel, technological innovation” and other advantageous industries to build up a composite industrial group. Blessed with the mature brand image, rich resources, sophisticated structure system, advanced management and passionate corporate culture of Greenland Group, Greenland Hong Kong is in the ambition of real estate benchmarking enterprise in the Hong Kong capital market by means of comprehensively integrating the current resources and leveraging the Hong Kong capital platform.
