LeEco Holdings has established a 10 billion industrial fund to focus on LeEco's ecosystem in cultural and entertainment and other fields

LeE.com's parent company, LeE.com, announced on the 28th that it has initiated the establishment of a "Changle Industry Fund" with a scale of 10 billion yuan with a total of 10 billion yuan. The initial phase of the fund is 3 billion to 5 billion yuan and is expected to begin operation at the end of January 2016. The fund has been targeted for "blood transfusion and capital injection" for LeEco's supercars and LeEco's super TV operator LeEco Zhixin, and will also be deployed in fields such as big data, artificial intelligence, culture and entertainment in the future.

LeE.com's parent company, LeE.com, announced on the 28th that it has initiated the establishment of a "Changle Industry Fund" with a scale of 10 billion yuan with a total of 10 billion yuan. The initial phase of the fund is 3 billion to 5 billion yuan and is expected to begin operation at the end of January 2016. The fund has been targeted for "blood transfusion and capital injection" for LeEco's supercars and LeEco's super TV operator LeEco Zhixin, and will also be deployed in fields such as big data, artificial intelligence, culture and entertainment in the future.

LeEco Holdings revealed that the fund was initiated by LeEco Holdings, with the participation of Shi Feng Capital, and introduced industry leaders and financial capital to jointly establish it. However, as of press time, LeEco Holdings has not responded to questions such as its specific investment amount in Changle Industrial Fund, various capital participation and LP (limited partner) status. The two parties have not yet announced the fundraising status of the fund and their respective capital contributions.

LeEco Holdings stated that the manager of Changle Fund was jointly appointed by LeEco Holdings and Changshi Capital. Jia Yuemin, vice chairman of LeEco Holdings, is one of the managing partners of Changle Fund. According to sources, LeEco Holdings and Changshi Capital have established a joint venture company to manage Changle Industrial Fund, registered in Shanghai, but the two parties have not announced the name of the company.

According to public information, Changshi Capital was established in April 2014 and is a venture capital fund. Wang Gongbin, founding partner of Changshi Capital, once served as head of Zhonglu Capital and vice president of Zhonglu Group. Previously, he led the team in Zhonglu to invest in 60 early-stage companies throughout 2013. He led the investment in Boqi Net, Naienbo Robot, Youjia, Sates Network, Yuanwei Software, Hongdian Shares, etc. Before joining Zhonglu Group, Wang Gongbin served as chief reporter of 21st Century Business Herald and deputy editor-in-chief of Financial Weekly, which has since ceased publication.

Another founding partner of Fashi Capital is Liekan. He had previously worked in TCL for ten years and participated in the entire TCL merger and acquisition of Thomson in his early years. In 2009, he joined the TCL Venture Capital team as managing director and human resources director and led many mobile Internet investment cases including Aibao and Zhoubao, as well as Changshu Automobile Accessories, Shenghong Technology, Yinlong Agriculture and Weile Technology. On December 11 this year, LeTV invested HK$2.268 billion (approximately 1.875 billion yuan) to invest in TCL Multimedia, becoming the second largest shareholder of TCL Multimedia with a 20% shareholding.

LeEco Holdings said that in addition to having targeted LeEco star projects such as LeEco Supercars and LeEco Zhixin, Changle Industrial Fund will mainly focus on LeEco's layout in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence, culture and entertainment.

Jia Yuemin predicts that Changle Industrial Fund plans to reach a scale of 100 billion in the next three to five years. Jia Yueting, chairman of Le Holdings, said,"In the next ten years, the boundaries of industry, organization and country will be quickly broken. I hope that Changle Fund can become a booster of the ecological economy."

For LeEco, which pursues a model of "negative hardware profit, profitable content", tight capital chain has always been a serious challenge it faces. Jia Yueting has repeatedly "transfused blood" to LeEco's model through equity pledge and reduction of holdings and cash out. The rapid expansion of LeEco's business landscape has caused frequent shortages in its capital flow, and its narrow financing channels has also been labeled as a "fund hungry patient" by the industry.

In 2015, LeEco quickly entered the manufacturing industry, and its smart hardware cars, TVs and mobile terminals entered a period of accelerated growth. LeEco's car-building project, codenamed "SEE Plan", is gradually disclosing its business plans for the development and future operation of electric vehicles, but has not announced its financing results. On December 28, on December 28, LeEco announced that it had completed its annual sales target of 3 million LeEco Super TVs. However, the investment cost was huge and the specific financing amount was still unknown. At present, LeTV Mobile has completed its first round of financing of US$530 million, has not yet announced investor information and financing methods, and is at a loss.

At present, LeE.com continues to suspend trading due to planning to acquire the equity of LeE.com. It plans to purchase the equity of LeE.com by issuing shares and raising matching funds to transfer the controlling stake of LeE.com. The transaction price has not yet been determined. Before the suspension on December 7, LeTV's closing price was 58.8 yuan/share, up 9.37%, and its total market value reached 109.1 billion yuan.

Editor: vian