Australia-based digital payment technology and consumer credit provider Afterpay has launched an unlisted public investment partnership called AP Ventures, Australian Financial Review reported on Monday.
The corporate owns a 44% stake in AP Ventures, which has more than 100 shareholders including private equity groups Thorney and ICM.
AP Ventures will invest more than A$10m ($6m) per deal in later-stage rounds and plans to provide roughly $30m to $36m for a total of five or six companies in the coming years.
The fund will make growth equity investments in retail, consumer and financial technology developers. AP Ventures CEO Hein Vogel told AFR it is structured as an unlisted public company to provide greater leeway on cheque sizes and the terms for inward investment.
The structure means AP Ventures only collects capital after conducting due diligence on a given transaction, allotting shares according to how much each investor has injected to date.
The fund’s first investment involved it providing approximately $8.7m for Australia-based layaway holiday package provider LayAway Travel, $3.8m of which came from Afterpay itself.
Hein Vogel said: “We have not gone out to raise A$200m and said we will deploy it in a certain time. We have a structure that gives us flexibility and we have raised some capital into the vehicle.
“When we find opportunities, we can find more capital. There is no commitment from the investors other than having investors with deep pockets who are very supportive.”