Sistema Asia Capital, a corporate venture capital vehicle for diversified Russia-based conglomerate Sistema, is raising $120m for a fund that will invest in Southeast Asia, DealStreetAsia reported today.
The unit invests in India and Southeast Asia but this will be its first fund solely dedicated to the latter area. It appointed Edward Tay as CEO in June this year, and Tay told DealStreetAsia it is seeking capital from limited partners in China and South Korea.
Sistema operates several corporate venturing vehicles including Sistema Venture Capital, which makes growth-stage investments in Russia and the United States, and asset manager Sistema Capital.
The new fund will target investments below $5m but is prepared to lead funding rounds. It will seek out technologies as well as cybersecurity, computer vision, smart cities, urban mobility and enterprise-focused internet-of-things technology developers.
Tay told DealStreetAsia: “We had previously witnessed the phenomenon of Southeast Asia directly migrating onto mobile platforms and this shift into smart city technologies will have a similar inflexion point.
“The global centre of gravity of technology development has started to shift eastwards and Asia is a natural progression of our long-term mandate.”
The Southeast Asia vehicle would follow a $120m fund initially closed by Sistema Asia Capital in 2015 that has since backed companies including online meat and fish retailer Licious, consumer credit platform Kissht and mobile commerce platform Mobikon.
