On January 10th, the IE Venture Day competition kicked-off very early in the morning at Fudan University in Shanghai, where aspiring IE entrepreneurs presented their business plans to a world-renowned panel of VC and Angel investors. This was the first time the IE Venture Day takes a step further delivering its entrepreneurial spirit abroad by launching the project in the Asian “hub”. The Venture Day is part of the IE Venture Lab which is the vehicle for preparing IE Business School student and alumni startups for pitches in different VC and Angel investor locations.

The Business Plan presentations included projects in micro finance, renewable energy, tourism, electric cars, theme parks, medical devices, biotechnology, agriculture, education, internet platforms and social media. The winner of this edition was the team of Medsynch, a new concept for health monitoring system. Some investors highlighted that all the Business Plans from the IE students were truly representative of the IE Business School approach to entrepreneurship and of its commitment to supporting new and disruptive ideas among the investors. In fact, during the event, one of the teams, XXBB (a social platform for Chinese mothers) has received a proposal from one the investors in the panel!

The IE Venture Day included as well a presentation from a local Angel Investor: The guest speaker, as well as a Jury member for the event was Mr. James Tan, a well-known Angel investor based in Beijing and Singapore who addressed the group on Startup Activity in China. Mr. Tan is Co- Founder of 55tuan and Managing Partner of QuestVC. QuestVC is a venture capital firm with offices in Beijing and Singapore that invests and incubates companies at the seed and angel stage. James is co-founder and former COO of 55Tuan, the largest social e-commerce site in China with 5,000 employees across 200 cities. Prior to this, James was in the technology and financial sectors with companies in the Singapore Technologies group and JPMorgan Chase.