Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd, an early-stage venture capital firm backed by Singapore's Temasek Holdings, has raised the targeted corpus for its new fund focused on Southeast Asia and India and will make the official final close soon, a top executive said.
“We just announced a first close of $230 million for the fourth fund. This was our target amount so we achieved our target on the first close,” said Ben Mathias, managing partner, Vertex Ventures. The VC firm intends to do a rolling close from here on until it reaches a hard cap of $280 million, he added.
Most of the Limited Partners (LPs), or investors, from the third fund have come back to invest in the new fund. The fund is also seeing a lot of interest from new investors and added several in the first close itself.
“India and Southeast Asia are both viewed very positively as investment destinations thanks to the fast-growing economies and rapidly expanding internet penetration across the region,” said Mathias.
He also said that there is no fixed amount dedicated for India from the fund. It will be deployed primarily across Singapore, India, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, he added.
The venture capital firm will continue with its strategy to focus on enterprise technology, financial technology and consumer internet in Southeast Asia and India, Vertex said in a statement separately.
Mathias further said that other sectors such as fintech, vernacular apps, health-tech and agri-tech are attractive for investments in India because they contribute to increased consumer spending and growing digital consumption. The VC firm also likes to bet on social-commerce and global software-as-a-service, he said.
Vertex had surpassed the target corpus for its third fund for Southeast Asia and India to mark the final close at $210 million in October 2017.
The firm’s debut fund of 2010 vintage and the second fund of 2014 vintage focused on these regions were fully funded by Temasek Holdings via Vertex Venture Holdings.
Vertex Venture Holdings is also an anchor investor in its other regional focused funds—Vertex Ventures China, Vertex Ventures USA and Vertex Ventures Israel. It also has two other funds—Vertex Ventures HC and Vertex Growth.
India investments
This year, Vertex has not announced any new bets in the country so far.
Earlier in March, Vertex led a Series C round in its existing portfolio payments firm InstaReM Pte. Ltd.
Last year, its new bets in India included OnEMI Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs digital lending startup Kissht, Hansel Software Pvt. Ltd, which operates real-time mobile app management platform Hansel.io, and Delightful Gourmet Pvt. Ltd, which operates online meat and fish ordering platform Licious.
Vertex's other investments in India include online services marketplace Housejoy, online travel agency Yatra and SaaS-based customer experience management platform CloudCherry.