IDG, which already has big investments in China through its venture arm there, has tied up with News Corp and heart to launch a $50 million “China New Media Fund” to invest and develop movies, DVDs and PC and virtual-reality games for the Chinese market, reports NYPost. One key component of the plan will be to release movies in theaters at the same time as the DVDs and PPV TV hits the marketplace, in an attempt to undermine piracy, the story says.“This is our pilot fund…We’ll probably do five or six films with that fund, and then we’ll see about doing a second fund of around $150 million,” he said in the story.
This comes after a 2005 fund that IDG did with Accel Partners..that was a $250 million fund, called IDG-Accel China Growth Fund, which was raised to invest in emerging Chinese companies including media/Internet sector. The enw fund seems to be more specialized in nature than the Accel one.