Warburg Pincus-backed DNE Group has launched an RMB-denominated fund to invest 6 billion yuan ($870.8 million) in new-economy infrastructure assets across key economic hubs in the country, the firm announced on Wednesday.
Shanghai-based DNE, a merger between D&J China and New Ease China, set up the new RMB fund in partnership with several institutional investors in China.
The fund’s seeds and pipeline assets are distributed across eastern China’s Yangtze River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in central and northern China, and other key city clusters, serving new-economy companies in areas like local retail, e-commerce, cold chain, and logistics, according to a statement.
“With deepening urbanisation and the development of private consumption in China, we expect the new economy infrastructure in China’s key economic hubs will remain in short supply and resilient,” said Sun Dongping, DNE’s Chairman and CEO.
As its biggest RMB fund since inception, the vehicle follows an over-1.5-billion-yuan ($217.7 million) listing of DNE REIT, DNE’s real estate investment trust (REIT), on the Shanghai stock exchange in October 2022. Its listing enables public investors to access investment opportunities in DNE REIT’s portfolio of industrial infrastructures, such as industrial parks, across cities including Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou in the Yangtze River Delta.
In April of the same year, DNE formed a joint venture (JV) with an unnamed institutional investor to invest in life sciences parks in China’s top-tier cities with an expected investment sum of about $1.2 billion.
DNE, which invests, develops, and operates new-economy infrastructures in China, currently has over $15 billion in assets under management (AUM) and more than 14 million square metres in gross floor area (GFA) across logistics and cold chains, life sciences and modern manufacturing parks, urban redevelopment, and data centres.
DNE was formed in December 2021 when China’s industrial real estate platform D&J China merged with New Ease, a developer and operator of institutional-grade logistics facilities in China.
Alongside the merger, DNE raised over $1.5 billion from investors including Partners Group, StepStone Group, Sequoia Capital, CPE, and D1 Capital Partners. Warburg Pincus and DNE’s Sun participated in the investment.
As a co-founder of both D&J China and New Ease, Sun was also instrumental in the establishment of e-Shang as he co-founded the warehouse development business in 2011 with Warburg Pincus and another logistics industry Jeffrey Shen. Shanghai-based e-Shang merged with Singapore’s Redwood Group in 2016 to form ESR, whose current market cap of $7.6 billion dwarfs some of Asia’s prominent property developers.