Jungle Ventures will remain “razor-focused” on being Southeast Asia’s early-stage investor of choice, even as the region continues to witness a spurt in IPO and Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) exits.
The Southeast Asian investor announced a $225 million first close of its $350 million fourth Southeast Asian fund earlier this week, roping in institutional investors such as Singapore state investor Temasek, the World Bank’s IFC, Germany’s DEG, and Asian family offices as limited partners (LPs).
Most of Jungle’s LPs are returning investors with several re-upping in this vehicle, shared Amit Anand, the founding partner of Jungle Ventures.
Jungle’s fourth fund will deploy cheque sizes of $500,000 and $20 million across 15 to 18 companies, making them a seed to Series B investor. This strategy of taking fewer and more select bets on startups also allows Jungle to create greater room for follow-on capital for its portfolio, explained Anand.
As such, Jungle does not see itself launching growth-stage funds or venturing into SPACs, which a number of regional VCs such as Vertex Ventures are looking to do.
“We like to focus on our strengths, which is taking the companies from zero to hundreds of millions in valuation, and then having the right partners come in and help these companies grow from there. Our focus will continue to remain on being the best early-stage platform in the region,” shared Anand in a video call.
The VC firm has already seen a number of its portfolio firms crack unicorn status, including Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) giant Kredivo, whose parent FinAccel recently agreed to merge with Victory Park Capital’s blank cheque firm at a combined valuation of $2.5 billion. Other names from its portfolio include Indonesian beauty platform Sociolla and B2B e-commerce platform Moglix.
Jungle will continue to look at emerging themes in Southeast Asia particularly in social commerce, SME digitalisation, B2B payments, and fintech.
According to Anand, Jungle has achieved a multiple of invested capital (MOIC) of 7x for its $100 million second fund from the 2016 vintage, and 3x MOIC for its $240 million third fund from the 2019 vintage.
Edited excerpts of DealStreetAsia’s interview with Amit Anand:
