Singapore-based venture capital firm Insignia Ventures Partners said Monday that it has raised USD 516 million to invest in startups across Southeast Asia.
Of this, USD 388 million will be allocated to its third flagship fund, while another USD 100 million will be used for making additional investments in portfolio companies. Insignia also raised a USD 28 million “entrepreneurs pool” from family offices of technology companies’ founders that will invest alongside the main fund.
Insignia is led by Yinglan Tan, a former venture partner at Sequoia Capital who left in 2017 to launch his own fund. It has invested in unicorns, or private companies with a valuation of USD 1 billion or more, such as Singapore-based online car marketplace Carro and Indonesian investment app Ajaib. Another portfolio company, Indonesian tech conglomerate GoTo, went public in April.
“We see a once-in-a-decade opportunity to capture outlier returns, as the winners become very obvious when the tide goes out,” Tan said in a news release.
Insignia said it will be more aggressively investing in such “next-decade sunrise sectors” as Web3—the proposed next-generation internet using blockchain technology—as well as climate technology, health care, and agriculture. It has already invested in cryptocurrency payment startup TripleA and blockchain game platform Particle Network.
The total raised is more than double the USD 200 million Insignia raised in 2019 for its second fund, and highlights the strong appetite for Southeast Asia’s startup sector industry despite a global downturn in tech valuations.
In addition to a string of large initial public offerings, such as GoTo and Singapore’s Grab, the region’s venture capital firms have been able to take advantage of growing regulatory pressure on the tech industry in China, which has prompted investors to look elsewhere.
Insignia did not identify the investors supplying the USD 516 million. But the firm says it manages capital from institutional investors including “sovereign wealth funds, foundations, university endowments, and renowned family offices from Asia, Europe, and North America.”
This article first appeared on Nikkei Asia. It has been republished here as part of 36Kr’s ongoing partnership with Nikkei.