Kingdee secures US$200 million Qatar investment

Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) has announced that it will invest about US$200 million in Hong Kong-listed Kingdee International Software, one of Chinese leading enterprise management and cloud software companies, Shanghai Daily learned on Tuesday.

It's the biggest single Middle Eastern investment in the Chinese software industry ever, representing a high recognition of China's SaaS (Software as a service) development globally.

QIA will secure about 4.26 percent of Kingdee's totally issued ordinary shares, with a lock-up period of 180 days.

The investment in Kingdee aligns with QIA's strategic approach to invest in companies and technologies "that are leading global digitalization and shaping the future enterprise ecosystem," both sides said in a statement.

Xu Shaochun, chairman of the board and CEO of Kingdee, expected the investment to "further support our international growth strategy."

Mohammed al-Hardan, head of QIA's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Department, said: "We believe in the long-term growth opportunity of Asia's software sector and recognize Kingdee as a category leader and key enabler of enterprise cloud transformation."

Shenzhen-headquartered Kingdee provides management software and cloud services for more than 7.4 million enterprises, governments and organizations across the world.

Besides Kingdee, QIA's investment portfolio includes Celonis from Germany, Britain's Builder.ai and Databricks, which offers artificial intelligence data and analysis services.