Tencent’s investment arm has been buying up stakes in platform companies poised to drive growth in online services

Tencent Investment, the investment arm of Tencent Holdings, is seeking to invest in a new breed of platform companies that will have the capacity to serve more users than those supported by the mobile internet.

Tencent Investment managing partner Forest Lin said the fund will invest in a wide range of platform companies, starting from early-stage start-ups that are raising series-A financing, all the way up to more mature companies seeking C-round financing, as well as those which have already listed on the stock market.

Internet platform companies match suppliers of services with demand aggregated by the platform. Tencent Holdings itself, which runs China’s largest messaging app WeChat and is a leading online game provider, is an aggregator of multiple platform companies.

Lin said his firm has been actively identifying the next generation of platform companies that could yield attractive returns. So far this year the investment entity has been involved in 60 investment deals globally, many of which it took part as one of multiple buyers acting in a consortium, with total deal value of US$25.34 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

“I believe that there is an emergence of a new breed of platform companies, and now the right time to find them,” Lin said, speaking on the sidelines of SuperReturn Asia conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday. “The ability to identify and access the most prominent platform companies would yield attractive financial and strategic returns from a corporate investor’s perspective.”

Annual revenue per employee of companies that run online platforms, such as Pinduoduo, Didi Chuxing and Tencent Music, is on average three to 50 times higher than that of many Chinese domestic firms, even though some of these listed companies, including large Chinese banks and mobile operators, enjoy near monopolies, he said.