Professor Chen Yugang: Industrial Funds with State-owned Capital Participation Empower Enterprise Development
Professor Yan Guangmei's research progress of anticancer drugs in recent years, from the first discovery of the "anticancer" properties of M1 virus, to the establishment of ViroTech to create a new model of precise oncolytic therapy, process R&D, then to achieve global leadership in specific technical fields. The frontier exploration of top research teams, the empowerment of incubator parks, the guidance of industrial funds, and the support of talent policies are all indispensable.
From "landlord" to shareholder to incubate anti-cancer drug enterprise
As a "landlord" providing high-quality hardware foundation and platform, at the same time, as a shareholder, Guangzhou Industrial Investment and Capital Operation Holding Group Ltd. has added impetus to the further R&D breakthrough of the enterprise. In February 2021, the Kechuang Zhihui Fund, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Industrial Investment and Capital Operation Holding Group Ltd., completed its investment in Virotech, supporting the R&D team to continue to promote the transformation of excellent research achievements through "capital empowerment + post-investment value-added".
Professor Chen Yugang from the School of Business and the Enterprise Research Institute of Sun Yat-sen University, believes that in addition to providing capital for enterprises, industrial funds with state-owned capital participation, such as Kechuang Zhihui Fund, can also "empower" in two aspects: One is to help enterprises find management talents. Usually, the founding team of enterprises is mainly composed of technical talents, while the talents in management, financial management, marketing and other positions are relatively short, so the funds need to give full play to the function of linking talents. The second is to introduce business resources, with the platform advantage of industrial funds, to help enterprises open up business channels.
Joint contribution of R&D platform to enhance the competitiveness of the industrial chains
On November 30th, 2021, Guangzhou International Business Incubator and ViroTech decided to jointly build a biomedical R&D platform. After the joint construction of the platform, how to further ensure the sustainable and independent development of the enterprises such as ViroTech, with state-owned capital as the landlord, shareholder and partner? Professor Chen Yugang put forward three suggestions. First, in terms of corporate governance, both industrial funds and investment target companies should introduce external professionals to participate in governance and decision-making to improve the efficiency of state-owned capital. Second, the industrial funds should establish a market-oriented operation mechanism, especially for the talent incentives to be fully market-oriented. "Dare to pay good money to hire top professionals to participate in the management and decision-making of the fund. Each link of 'investment, financing, management and withdrawal' should have a professional team". Third, industrial funds should participate in the management of the company as shareholders, and make full use of the resources within the scope of compliance, to achieve the goal of win-win for industrial funds, incubators and enterprises.
