Itochu Technology Ventures (ITV), the corporate venturing arm of diversified Japan-based trading firm Itochu, is raising a new fund for 2015, director Shinji Asada has told Tech in Asia.
The fund will be sized at between $50m and $100m, and around 30% of the cash will be invested internationally, with Southeast Asia to be a particular focus.
ITV is still investing out of the $54m fund it raised in 2011. That fund also set a 30% target for non-Japanese investments, though in practice many of them have tended to be in US-based companies.
Two of its US-based portfolio companies are Box, the cloud content platform that filed for a $250m initial public offering in March, and Fab.com, which could soon be acquired, but Asada said that Southeast Asia’s potential for forming billion-dollar companies is what is drawing the unit to the region.
“If you look at Japan and Southeast Asia as a market it is going to be bigger than the United States,” he told Tech in Asia.
“That is something that should not be ignored by VCs. From a tech standpoint there are challenges since there are multiple culture and languages…but given the population and market size there has to be an upside.”