Singapore-based venture capital (VC) firm Jungle Ventures has joined hands with Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata’s personal investment vehicle RNT Associates, Accel Partners (India) and Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd (IIPL) to float SeedPlus, a seed stage VC firm based in Singapore.
SeedPlus will invest in companies in Southeast Asia and work closely with them to scale their businesses.
Jungle Ventures started out as an angel investment firm in 2012. It moved into Series A and Series B financing with the launch of a $100 million fund last year.
The fund will function as an early stage venture investing platform that will be managed by partners with a strong global operational backgrounds who can help portfolio firms grow via their network and direct involvement with each company, it said in a statement.
The new fund will be run by three operating partners who have recently joined Jungle Ventures—Michael Smith, who was CTO at streaming service HOOQ, former Spotify product manager Gabriel Lundberg and Tiang Lim Foo, who was previously with Evernote.
Their roles differ from that of investment partners who are responsible for overseeing decisions on making and exiting investments. In VC firms, senior investment partners usually manage the firm, with operating partners reporting to them.
Jungle Ventures invests across all early stages of startups and has made investments in India, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
In July last year, Tata had joined Jungle Ventures as special adviser.
Its investments in India include Reddoorz, LivSpace, Moglix, Pokkt and Zipdial (acquired by Twitter). Its portfolio also includes Singapore-based travelmob (acquired by NASDAQ-listed HomeAway), GoVoyagin, Crayon Data and Tradegecko; Malaysia’s iMoney and CatchThatBus; Thailand’s Pomelo Fashion and Australia-based Edrolo.
SeedPlus will also offer Accel Partners—which provides seed and early stage capital to companies operating in India—a platform to invest in firms operating in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore.
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