Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India (VVSEAI) has announced the final close of its fifth fund at $541 million.
According to Temasek Holdings, a Singapore-based investment firm, the latest fund is 80% larger than Fund IV, which closed at $305 million in 2019.
After seeing impressive cash-on-cash returns from its portfolio, Vertex raised funds for its new Fund V. The company said this includes highly successful exits from its investments in Grab, FirstCry, XpressBees, and Recko, among many other companies.
“Our earlier funds have had superior cash-on-cash returns and are outperforming benchmarks. This track record led most of our investors from VVSEAI Fund IV to return as investors in VVSEAI Fund V and increase their allocation. In addition, we expanded our total investor base significantly and are happy to welcome all our Limited Partners,” said Ben Mathias, managing partner, Vertex Ventures.
The latest fund is backed by existing and new limited partners (LPs), including family offices, corporates, sovereign wealth funds, and financial institutions from Asia and Europe.
New Limited Partners include Japan Investment Corporation (JIC), International Finance Corporation (IFC) and DEG (German Development Finance Institution).
The fund corpus includes a dedicated co-investment envelope of $50 million for co-investing alongside the primary fund in startups led by women founders.
More than 35% of the startups in the company’s previous fund have at least one female founder, and this envelope will be used to further the fund’s objective of supporting more women entrepreneurs, according to the company.
VVSEAI invests in high-growth startups in Southeast Asia and India looking for institutional venture capital funding in their early stages. The company has invested in over 80 industries, including consumer internet, financial technology, and enterprise technology.
The Vertex-backed ventures in India include Licious, KukuFM, Kissht, Ace Turtle, Kapiva, BeepKart, Certa, Signzy and Ayu Health.
“The macro opportunity is palpable, but what excites us more is the continuing maturity of the ecosystem and the quality of founders we are working with in building category-defining companies. Especially in India, we are working with founders tackling very interesting problems across socioeconomic strata in India and building great products for the world,” said Piyush Kharbanda, general partner, Vertex Ventures.
