Vertex Ventures, a venture capital investor backed by Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings, has marked the final close of its fifth India and Southeast Asia-focused fund at $541 million (Rs 4,488 crore), exceeding target fund size of $450 million.
The final close comes after a year since the Singapore-headquarter Vertex started raising commitments for its fifth fund.
The fifth fund has seen an increase in its corpus of about 80% as compared to its previous fund. Fund IV, which was raised in 2019, had a corpus of $305 million.
In terms of the limited partners (LP) portfolio, Fund V is backed by both existing and new LPs, including sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, corporates and family offices across Asia and Europe. New Limited Partners include Japan Investment Corporation (JIC), International Finance Corporation (IFC) and DEG (German Development Finance Institution).
“Our earlier funds have had good cash-on-cash returns and are outperforming benchmarks. This track record led most of our investors from Fund IV to return as investors in Fund V and increase their allocation. In addition, we expanded our total investor base as well,” said Ben Mathias, managing partner, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.
Notably, the fund corpus includes a dedicated co-investment envelope of $50 million for co-investing alongside the main fund in startups led by women founders.
Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India is part of Vertex Holdings' network of global funds. Vertex Holdings, one of the biggest Southeast Asian-based VC investors, has $5 billion in assets under management across its funds and has about 200 active portfolio companies.
Vertex had previously exceeded its fourth fund's fundraising target of $280 million in 2019. Temasek had fully funded Vertex's first and second funds, raised in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Its third fund hit the final close in 2017 with $210 million in commitments, also exceeding its targeted corpus.
It has currently made about 80 investments in early-growth stage startups in Southeast Asia and India across sectors like enterprise technology, financial technology, consumer internet, digital health, sustainability, mobility and others.
In March, the firm exited from internet-of-things (IoT) startup Flutura Decision Sciences and Analytics. According to VCCircle estimates, the firm bagged a 3-3.5x multiple of invested capital (MOIC) thus translating into an internal rate of return of around 20-25%.
Vertex had invested in startups like online meat delivery unicorn Licious, audio content platform KukuFM, digital lending platform Kissht, direct-to-consumer (D2C) retail platform Ace Turtle, ayurveda-based D2C brand Kapiva online retailer for used two-wheelers BeepKart, third party management platform Certa, digital banking infrastructure provider Signzy and hospital chain Ayu Health.
