Chinese internet giant Baidu backs Indonesia’s Convergence Ventures

Earlier today, Indonesia-based early stage venture capital firm Convergence Ventures announced it has formed a financial and strategic partnership with Baidu, China’s largest search engine and web services company headquartered in Beijing.

Adrian Li, founding managing partner of Convergence Ventures says the partnership has significantly increased his firm’s fund size. He did not disclose the amount of capital Baidu contributed.

When Adrian and fellow partner Donald Wihardja announced the early stage fund almost exactly one year ago (previously named Convergence Accel), they said the fund size sat at US$25 million.

The partnership also brings technical resources and know-how from China to the table for existing and future portfolio companies under the VC’s wing.

Adrian says Convergence Ventures’ portfolio companies will now be able to source things like tech talent from Beijing, and also send founders to China for knowledge transfer. Baidu’s ubiquitous presence in its home market means it can help Indonesian apps gain traction in China. This aspect of the partnership, Adrian says, will not be limited to Convergence’s portfolio companies. Rather, Convergence will help Baidu identify potential startups ready for expansion into China.

Another co-working space

In a commitment to fostering seed stage ventures, Baidu Indonesia and Convergence Ventures are in the planning stages for a joint co-working space to support young startups. Adrian says that they have not yet pinned down a specific location for this endeavor, but are expecting to do so within the next six months.

Convergence Ventures has been busy this year. It has made eight investments in Southeast Asia, including Singapore’s personal finance portal MoneySmart, Indonesia’s SMS-based personal assistant service YesBoss, humor media portal MalesBanget, and Jakarta’s foodtech startup Qraved, of which Adrian is an original co-founder.

See: Indonesia’s foodtech firm Qraved gobbles up an $8M series BBaidu is taking on a more active role outside of its home turf, increasing its footprint in emerging markets like Brazil and Indonesia. In 2013, the Chinese search engine opened an office in Jakarta.

(Disclosure: Tech in Asia has an ongoing content partnership with Baidu. This article isn’t part of that series.)