VA
Insights

Dear VA family and friends,

While 2017 is gradually cooling down to a peaceful year end, Venture Avenue is at an even faster pace. In December, VA’s footprints covered places as warm as Shenzhen, cold as far north of Inner Mongolia, and rainy as Cambridge, U.K. Let go all the hectic, it is the time of the year for me to turn to the calendar, and gather my thoughts on a bigger question: what have Venture Avenue achieved in 2017?

There is nothing more thrilled than envisioning a strategy with entrepreneurs who aspire for disruptive changes and impact. In November, VA kicked off a strategic planning project for Vanke Foundation. We coded the project “Masterpiece”. We envisioned the foundation to be another work of Mr. Wang Shi, as he now commits his post-retirement time to strategic philanthropy.

Legacy is created through solving social issues, and also through creating “code of values” that can be passed to next generations. In the fourth of year of our partnership with Lao Niu Foundation, VA started probing the questions: Why are we in the philanthropy business? How do we work together to get things done? Answers to those questions will not only guide the foundation’s strategies, but also help define a more homogenous DNA that can be inherited through generations.

Venture Avenue’s partnership with “impact business” hit a new record in 2017. Since 2014, VA has been working with global business leaders on how to make changes in their high-impact business. Driven by Venture Avenue’s passion in impact, we consciously selected business topics which will significantly impact lives, such as life science and environment science. The “impact business” not only enables us to continuously recruiting great talents, but also builds a more solid caliber in VA team so they can capably influence our non-profit partners.

We are also excited to see impact from our Social Innovation Hub at Tsinghua x-lab and Yu Impact Fund. In November, the SI Hub partnered with UNDP and Hult Prize in Tsinghua to organize a social entrepreneurship Hackathon. We also successfully set up a course “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship” in Tsinghua open to undergraduates. We are thrilled to build on what Venture Avenue’s past achievements to influence our future leaders to make stronger impact.

Last but not least, I have to congratulate Venture Avenue’s “First Sound” team – in last 2 years, they have raised approximately RMB4 million, and the program has become one of the most influential charitable program to call for collective efforts focusing on children’s hearing health, and helped 19 underprivileged children to recover from hearing loss with full sponsorship.

Other key milestones that Venture Avenue accomplished in 2017 are:

Supported Asian Development Bank’s $100M sovereign loan to scale up inclusive business in Shanxi and Heilongjiang

Developed fund raising and partnership strategy for Rare Conservation’s China Impact Fund specializing in agribusiness

As strategic investor, we invested in a Shanxi-based inclusive agribusiness which support over 1,000 low-income families every year

My dear VA family and friends, it has been an honor to have you in an accomplished year 2017. I hope you have shared our fulfillment of creating changes and impact on both community and business.

Enjoy the great holiday, and wish you a prosperous 2018!

Robin Zhang
Founder, Venture Avenue