Entrepreneurial finance down for Chinese start-ups

Augusto Rocha and Professor Ross Brown from the School of Management have published an article on the turbulence in the market for entrepreneurial finance in China since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The piece has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights and is the first paper to assess how entrepreneurship has been affected by the current crisis in the Chinese context. 

Sources of entrepreneurial finance such as venture capital and business angel finance are crucial for innovative start-ups.  The research shows that these investments fell rapidly in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the virus, resulting in a year on year decrease of 60% in the total volume of equity investment raised.  Early-stage seed investment fell the most dramatically suggesting that nascent start-ups will be those most heavily affected by the crisis.  

This work is part of a wider programme of research being undertaken by Brown and Rocha to examine the multi-faceted ways in which the coronavirus outbreak has impacted entrepreneurship.

Read Entrepreneurial uncertainty during the Covid-19 crisis: Mapping the temporal dynamics of entrepreneurial finance.

Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash