Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, an early stage venture capital firm backed by Singapore's Temasek Holdings, has surpassed the target corpus for its third fund to mark the final close at $210 million.
The third fund--which originally aimed to raise $150 million--is the VC firm’s first fund to get external limited partners (LPs), it said in a statement.
The firm’s Vertex SEA Fund I of 2010 vintage and Fund II of 2014 vintage are fully funded by Temasek Holdings via its venture capital arm Vertex Venture Holdings.
The fund will continue its strategy of investing in early-stage technology companies in Southeast Asia and India across enterprise technology, financial technology and consumer internet.
Vertex Ventures' recent investments in India include Synup, a digital marketing for local businesses firm; Flutura, an Internet of Things (IoT) analytics firm; Ace Turtle, an omni-channel order management firm; and Cloudcherry, a customer experience management SaaS firm.
Its early bets in India include baby- and kids-focussed e-commerce platform FirstCry and online travel agency Yatra.
Kee Lock CHUA, managing partner of Vertex Ventures, said in addition to Singapore and India, countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have accelerated support for the startup and venture capital ecosystem.
Vertex Ventures has main offices in Bengaluru, Singapore and Indonesia. It will expand to other cities in Southeast Asia in the near future to better access local opportunities, said Joo Hock CHUA, managing partner, of Vertex Ventures.
Spurt of VC fundraising
Top global VC firms have either raised new funds or topped their old India-focussed funds in recent months, despite a slowdown in dealmaking from the highs of 2015.
Early in July, SAIF Advisors Pvt. Ltd raised $350 million (Rs 2,247 crore) for its third India-focussed vehicle.
In June, global venture capital firm Sequoia Capital had topped up its fourth India-focussed fund for the second time by $125 million after closing its first India fund worth $920 million only a year ago.
In December last year, Accel Partners had raised $450 million for its fifth fund to make seed and early-stage investments in Indian startups.
Besides, a bunch of homegrown new early-stage VC funds including Fireside Venture, Stellaris Venture Partners and Endiya Partners have marked either the first or the final closing of their funds this year.
Meanwhile, early last month, another Singapore-based venture capital firm Vickers Venture Partners said it will enter India to invest in technology-driven startups.
