Yahoo has been shaky in 2011 with falling revenues and uncertainty after the firing of CEO Carol Bartz. A cash infusion and and restructuring of assets might be just the thing to help the company find its center again.

The company is expected to sell its entire stake of Yahoo Japan back to majority shareholder Softbank, and sell most of its stake in huge Chinese Internet company Alibaba, according to the New York Times. It will likely keep a 15 percent stake of Alibaba Group.

Along with today’s reports on the Asian assets, AllThingsD is reporting that Yahoo has intensified its difficult search for a CEO replacement. Potential candidates in the running include Google business lead Nikesh Arora, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, and Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson.

However, take those names with a grain of salt because the report is using unnamed sources, and Yahoo’s board is notoriously fickle with its decision-making. But at the heart of the matter, a new CEO, if it could install one soon, could help lead the sale of the company’s Asian properties and re-focus the company on products.

Yahoo’s stock on the Nasdaq exchange increased nearly 6 percent today on the Asian asset sale and CEO rumors, and now sits at about $16 a share.

Our DEMO partners in Asia are doing an excellent job revving up for the event.

Now they’ve opened the application process for companies seeking to launch there Feb 28-Feb 2. Many of these will be startups from Singapore and from surrounding countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Some of them will be new companies that haven’t had the opportunity to present at such a large-scale event.

The DEMO Asia team will be holding auditions for those companies wanting to launch products there. If you’re a company interested in auditioning, send an email to the DEMO Asia team expressing your interest, and they’ll respond soonest.

December 8th and 15th will be the next audition dates.

DEMO Asia is also an excellent launchpad for companies throughout the world hoping to launch in the Asian marketplace. As part of the DEMO experience, we’ve also created a way where companies that launch in Asia also get access to the DEMO event in the U.S., and in DEMO Brazil. And vice versa. Companies that launch in the U.S. at DEMO, get the right for free access to the DEMO Asia and DEMO Brazil events. 

I’m really looking forward to seeing amazing new companies surface throughout this program. Things are looking very exciting in Asia!

Venture capital investment in Asia has nearly tripled in the past five years to $15.6 billion. China has leaped ahead to become the world’s second-largest venture market at $7.6 billion investments, while India has climbed to third place at $5.8 billion.

Together, these dragon and tiger markets account for 13 percent of the $37.8 billion put into startups globally. That’s up from 5 percent in 2005.

Since 2005, more than 6,000 startups in Asia – about half of them in India and China alone – have been venture funded.

These two markets are also tops when it comes to mobile service adoption. China ranks highest in the world, with 840 million mobile service subscribers, while India places second with 673 million subscribers. Vietnam has 78 million mobile service subscribers in a country of 89 million people!

China is also gaining ground when it comes to technology patents. The country scores fourth worldwide for new patent applications, up from tenth place in 2005. Two giant Chinese companies – ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies – are among the top four corporate patent filers in the world.

For sure, the U.S. still leads the global venture capital market, weighing in with 70 percent of investments in startups and 64 percent of deals worldwide. But VC spending in America has flattened and hasn’t recovered momentum since the last peak more than 10 years ago. The U.S. remains the world’s superpower innovator, too, with 28 percent of all patent applications in 2010. But the U.S. share of patent filings has slipped from 34 percent in 2005, while China’s portion stands at 7.6 percent, up by 56 percent in 2010.

In other telling signs of the eastward shift, the U.S. slipped to fifth from third place in a recent World Economic Forum ranking of 138 countries by technology development and competitiveness. Singapore ranked second, while Taiwan and Korea moved up among the top 10, China leapfrogged to 36th place, and Vietnam scored with the fastest climb.

Asia’s innovation hotspots are fast emerging as first choice destinations for bright young entrepreneurs. By 2014, an estimated 200,000 skilled tech workers leave the U.S. to return to their Chinese and Indian homelands to find new opportunities and to create tomorrow’s leading startups. Consider some of the great companies created by Chinese and Indian immigrants to the Valley: Sun Microsystems, Hotmail, Yahoo and YouTube.

This year, Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Elliott Ng took a job at Google in China and moved his young family there. Raj Gilda left a VP post at Citigroup in New York and moved to Pune in India to ramp up a vocational training and micro-lending operation called Lend-A-Hand. Mentor and tech entrepreneur Bryan Pelz left Los Angeles for Ho Chi Minh City to work with mobile gaming and search startup VNG, which borrows from Shanda, Tencent, Google and Baidu. Yale undergrad Alice Wang left the ivy-covered walls for a job at a Groupon venture in China.

Getting in on the action, Singapore is making good with government hand-outs and skillful coaching for entrepreneurs. KC Wong is jumpstarting Sparky Animation in Singapore and wants to make it in Hollywood. Mobile security startup Tencube, incubated at the National University of Singapore, was acquired by McAfee. Taiwan is luring startups to move beyond their base in churning out more than semiconductors and electronic goods, and has turned on the lights for a number of LED startups.

The super-charged emerging markets of Asia promise to deliver the next Facebook phase – a turning point that will spark a creativity surge like the social media boom. Startups create jobs and wealth, and enthusiasm for future innovations.

Once, Sand Hill Road investors rarely scouted deals outside the San Francisco Bay Area. Now, they can’t get enough of Asia. Silicon Valley leader Dick Kramlich of giant New Enterprise Associates left his Nob Hill home and art collection and moved with his wife to Shanghai for more than a year to be in the thick of this happening city. Venture heavy Gary Rieschel of Qiming Venture Partners left behind a Bay Area career and his wine collection to relocate to Shanghai, working from the 39th floor of JinMao Tower overlooking the Bund. Former Sequoia Capital India head Sumir Chadha – now back at WestBridge Capital Partners – moved from his comfortable suburban residence in Burlingame to a sea-facing condo in Mumbai. IDG chairman Pat McGovern has made 100 trips to China and is now exploring new terrain in Vietnam and India, and financing dozens of scrappy young entrepreneurial ventures.

“The opportunity is now. In a few years, it will be too late,” says Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China. Now chairman and CEO of Beijing-based Innovation Works, Lee advises young Chinese entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to “Go East” and he’s financing dozens of startups and mentoring the founders.

These trends underscore a shift in entrepreneurial and inventive muscle to Asia. As the currents for tech innovation move across the Pacific Ocean to China and onward to the Indian Ocean, America’s long-term competiveness is increasingly at stake. Consider how important venture capital is to economic growth:  In 2009, venture-backed companies in the U.S. contributed 21 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product and 12 million jobs, according to IHS Global Insight.

Powerful tides are shifting, and quickly, as not only Chinese and Indian immigrants return home for improved job opportunities and family ties, but also young professionals and bright college graduates pack their bags and settle into a comfortable lifestyle and community of like-minded dynamos in Asia’s top tier cities. It’s not a roundtrip ticket either, but a several years’ journey or a lifetime commitment.

This exodus is laying a foundation for Asia to out-innovate America.

“Silicon Valley will not forfeit its leadership, but China and India will compete heavily,” says Ajit Nazre, a partner at top tier venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “We will see hundreds of companies coming out from these markets with huge growth and lots of potential.”

This new innovation dawn in Asia is really only the beginning. Over the next two decades, the startup game will play out in a new geography distant from its Silicon Valley roots.

Rebecca A. Fannin is the author of Startup Asia (Wiley, 2011) and Silicon Dragon (McGraw-Hill, 2008). Fannin will be appearing at Kepler’s Book Store, 1010 El Camino Real, in Menlo Park, Calif. on Friday, Dec. 9, at 6pm, for a talk, book signing and cocktail reception. 

[Top image via Lu Wenjuan/Shutterstock]

Reuters reports that the new funding will be raised during the beginning of 2012 and that the firm had originally planned to raise $4 billion but will now be aiming as high as $6 billion.

Already, KKR represents the largest Asian-focused fund from a private equity firm. The firm maintains a $4 billion fund raised in 2007 to support Asian investments as well as a $1 billion China growth fund. The former is currently 70 percent invested, sources told Reuters, which has prompted the new fundraising efforts.

KKR now has investments in China, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Taiwan.

According to recent reports from KKR, it expects less volatility in markets like China where the government debt load is lower. “Both Europe and the U.S. are likely to face increased political unrest and social discord as they try to stimulate growth and reduce debt at the same time,” the firm stated in its statements on global macroeconomic trends.

Analysts at the firm also pegged Asia (with the exception of Japan) as a key point of global economic growth but also cited Chinese inflation as a point of concern.

As we’ve noted in recent months, a shaky market in the U.S. as well as distinct advantages in the pan-Asian arena are making the region more and more interesting to investors. Singapore in particular is a hotbed, with a tech-savvy workforce and startup-friendly government regulation.

South Korea’s market fell 5.2 percent, while Hong Kong’s main market index was down 6 percent. The Nikkei 225 Inex in Japan was down 2.7 percent. Taiwan, Australia and Indonesia also fell. If stocks keep falling around the world, that could undermine the confidence that is crucial to any recovery in the U.S. and in tech stocks.

And if the market meltdown keeps spreading, the malaise is likely to take a toll on tech spending, as consumer purchases of all goods typically fall in a recession, as we saw in 2008-2009.

While the U.S. and Europe are the source of economic fears, investors in Asia seemed to ignore the fact that most of the region is in good health.

Bloomberg said the decline has now wiped out $7.8 trillion in stock value in the past two weeks. Gold prices have risen to above $1,748 an ounce as investors seek safe havens. The Japanese yen and the Swiss franc are also rising.

Opal’s operations in Canberra, Australia’s capital, give GE a platform from which to test products in a developed country with a supportive stance on clean energy while building ties within Asia.

“By bringing Opal Software’s proven technologies together with GE’s solution platforms, our talented teams will drive the next wave of software solutions. Opal Software will help secure GE as a smart grid technology leader and meet the needs of the fast-growing Asia Pacific region,” said Matt McKenzie, general manager, Asia region for GE’s Digital Energy business in a company statement.

Opal makes software that allows utilities to switch between various platforms and offers data migration services that will allow GE software to communicate with non-GE products. Opal software products also help manage the building and management of networks that utilities use, thus allowing GE to broaden its smart grid services beyond meters and power grid equipment, Earth2Tech explains.

It looks like Australia understands the value it has for companies looking to pave a road to China. Greentech Media cites Paul Adler, an official at the Australian Trade Commission as saying, “Many view Australia as a stepping stone into the big pie . . . Australia is a fantastic incubator.”

Other companies doing cleantech work in the Australia region include building management systems startup Building IQ, which was a finalist in the innovation competition at GreenBeat 2009; Grid Net, which is teaming with utility company Energy Australia on smart grid offerings; and Aurora Algae, which plans to open a pilot plant in Australia. Fellow biofuels player LanzaTech is based in neighboring New Zealand.

Are you a green executive or entrepreneur? If so, sign up now for GreenBeat 2010 — the year’s seminal conference on the smart grid — November 3-4 at Stanford University. World leaders in smart grid initiatives will debate how the new “Super Grid” is creating huge opportunities in cars, energy storage, and renewables. GreenBeat 2010 is hosted by VentureBeat and SSE Labs of Stanford University. Go here for full conference details and to apply for the 2010 Innovation Competition. Early-bird tickets are available until October 15th.

From the VentureWire story:

Vivo expects to invest this fund in 14 to 18 companies, with a particular emphasis on those with drugs or medical devices in clinical trials. Historically, it has put 70% of investments into biotechnology companies and 30% into medical device concerns. Its portfolio includes drug makers Aspreva Pharmaceuticals Corp., which went public in 2005; CoTherix Inc., which went public in 2004 and was acquired last year by Actelion Ltd.; and Oculex Pharmaceuticals Inc., acquired by Allergan Inc. in 2003 for $230 million cash.

In recent years, Vivo has been considering opportunities in Asia and is now ready to make direct investments there. It already has backed an undisclosed U.S. company that has two joint ventures with Chinese companies, [Vivo partner Chen] Yu said. In addition, the firm has hired a team in China to help it invest there, though Yu declined to give details about that team or the types of investments the firm expects to make there. He estimated that Vivo would back two or three Asian companies with this fund.

The partners are attracted to Asia, and China in particular, because the medical-technology market there is beginning to mature, Yu said. Other firms scouting Chinese health-care opportunities include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which last year hired as partner James Li, former medical director of China operations; and Burrill & Co., which is raising up to $200 million for a China-focused fund.

Yu also said Vivo is positioned to see the best deals in China, largely because of the connections of Managing Partner Frank Kung, who formerly was co-founder of Genelabs Technologies Inc., a company he took public in 1991 that established operations in Taiwan, Singapore, and Switzerland in addition to the U.S.

Vivo’s bare-bones release on its new fund is here.