Vertex Ventures SEA & India Partnership Completes Final Close of Fund IV at USD305 Million

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India (“Vertex Ventures SEA & India”) is pleased to announce that it has completed the final close of its newest fund at USD305 million. This comes after the fund announced in May that it had reached its target corpus of USD230 million in its first close.

This new Fund IV raise for Vertex comes on the heels of multiple growing successes in its portfolio. This includes companies like Grab, Patsnap, Validus, Tickled Media and InstaRem where Vertex was the first institutional investor. Fund IV was backed by both existing and new Limited Partners, including sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, corporates and family offices across Asia and Europe.

“Vertex is one of the best performing funds in the region. We are very happy with the performance of Fund III and with the portfolio they have managed to build which is what caused us to continue our relationship in Fund IV with a larger commitment amount.”, said Roque VELASCO, Managing Partner of Galdana Ventures, a Limited Partner of Vertex Ventures SEA & India in Fund III and Fund IV.

Ben MATHIAS, Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures SEA & India commented, “Our investors are very positive about Southeast Asia and India, given the strong economic growth in this region, coupled with rapid internet adoption and digitization of businesses. Our earlier funds have had superior returns and are outperforming benchmarks. This track record was what helped us close the fund so quickly.”

Joo Hock CHUA, Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures SEA & India, also shared, “We have been first institutional investor in many successful Asian companies and we continue to look for high-growth startups in the region that we can build into global champions. All the Partners in Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India have long experience in VC and building companies. We have always worked very closely with our Founders and share our experience to guide them to build great companies right from their early funding phase.”

Vertex Ventures SEA & India has made more than 40 investments across the region and is completing its last remaining investments in Fund III. The firm aims to start deployment from Fund IV before the end of the year, and will continue its strategy of investing in early-stage Series A technology companies in Southeast Asia and India, across Enterprise Technology, Financial Technology and Consumer Internet.

Some recent investments include GlowRoad (social commerce leader in India), RoomMe (guesthouse “kosts” aggregator in Indonesia) and Sunday (digital insurance platform in Thailand). Other rapidly growing companies in the Vertex Ventures SEA & India portfolio include Payfazz (largest agent-based financial platform for the unbanked and underbanked population in Indonesia), Licious (online farm-to-fork meat brand), Warung Pintar (technology-enabled micro SME stores), Storehub (cloud-based point-of-sale platform for SMEs) and Validus (marketplace lending for SME’s invoice financing).

Vikas NAHATA, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Validus said, “Vertex has been a true partner to Validus and has been with us through every step of our journey since it led our Series A. Not only are they the most connected VC in this region, where they have helped to open doors and brought us numerous clients and partners, they are also hands-on and provide very valuable guidance.”

Vertex Ventures SEA & India is one of six major funds in Vertex's global network of venture capital funds. These funds each focus on investments in their respective region and industry specialization. Each of the Vertex Funds is independently managed and raises majority of its funds from global investors with Vertex Holdings as the anchor investor. Vertex Holdings is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.

With the combined regional expertise and global reach, each team can leverage on the global network of Vertex Ventures teams to get a broad view of innovation and share learning experience across the world. Earlier in September, Vertex Growth Fund (“VGF”) — another fund within the Vertex network — announced a final close of USD290 million for its initial fund.