Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures has closed a $100m fund supported by media company Hubert Media, TechinAsia reported on Wednesday.
Other investors include Temasek, an investment firm owned by Singapore’s government and state-funded National Research Foundation of Singapore as well as family offices belonging to entrepreneur Khoon Hong Kuok, nephew of Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok, and manufacturing conglomerate Kewalram Chanrai Group respectively.
The fund is 10 times the size of Jungle Ventures’ inaugural vehicle and will focus on series A and B deals rather than seed investments, TechCrunch reported yesterday. The firm has already begun investing from the fund and will aim to inject a minimum of $3m per business in up to 15 portfolio companies.
In addition to investing in southeast Asian startups, the new fund will consider companies in India and Asia Pacific that are looking to expand into Southeast Asia.
Jungle Ventures will still offer early-stage capital via its new $18m fund, SeedPlus, a joint venture launched this year and backed by investors including International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of multilateral institution World Bank.
Commenting on the fund’s bigger size, Anand said: “The [startup] ecosystem has matured. In 2012 there were maybe 300 deals a year, now it is anything between 2,000 to 3,000, that is a big jump in just a few years. We always felt startups are under-capitalised here given the challenges they face on operations.”
– A version of this article first appeared on our sister site Global Government Venturing.