CreditEase China, a national wealth management, credit management, microfinance investment, and microcredit loan origination and servicing, today announced that CreditEase Israel Innovation Fund (CEIIF), its first Israel-focused venture-capital / private-equity fund, has raised $30 million from its clients in China in a first closing of the fund.
CEIIF is managed by Israel Innovation Investment Management Ltd., a Cayman Islands-based manager that is jointly owned by CreditEase and its founding managing partners, Tayman Kan and Benjamin Weiss.
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The new fund focuses primarily on private technology companies located in Israel and the U.S. It considers opportunities across a broad spectrum of industries, including technology, media, telecommunications, health care and smart materials, and will invest in a mixture of early- and later-stage opportunities.
“The first closing of CEIIF represents a significant milestone for our wealth-management platform. We are encouraged by the confidence our clients continue to show in our new VC/PE investment products, ” said Richard Williamson, co-head of corporate strategy for CreditEase.
“We believe that technology companies in Israel offer interesting investment opportunities for our clients, and we are proud to team up with Tayman and Ben, who bring a unique combination of skills and an impressive joint track record of success.”
Kan, 41, of Hong Kong, and Weiss, 36, of Australia, have experience investing in technology startups. In 2011 their iNetworks 360 fund was the first seed investor in Pebbles Interfaces, the virtual-reality startup recently sold to Facebook. Since then, they have invested in 10 other Israeli companies, including Corephotonics, Saguna Networks and Silentium.
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Beijing, CreditEase said it has 50, 000 employees across more than 100 cities in China. The company added that it services more than 1 million borrowers.
CreditEase is supported by international institutional investors, including Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and IDG Capital Partners, said the announcement.
