Singapore-based e-commerce and video game group Sea Group is committing $1bn to a corporate venture capital unit called Sea Capital, it revealed in its annual financial results yesterday.
Founded in 2009 as Garena, Sea offers online games through a platform also dubbed Garena, as well as running an e-commerce marketplace called Shopee and a digital financial services offering under the Sea Money brand. It floated in an $884m initial public offering in 2017.
Sea Capital is being launched to build a broader ecosystem around the company’s offering and will target developers of consumer and enterprise technology. The $1bn will be deployed over the next few years, it said.
The unit will be overseen by chief investment officer David Ma, founder and head of Composite Capital Management, an investment management firm recently acquired by Sea. He will report to Sea chairman and CEO Forrest Li.
Ma had previously been a partner at one of Sea’s pre-IPO investors, hedge fund manager Hillhouse Capital, from 2010 to 2014.
Although it has not previously overseen a dedicated corporate venturing unit, Sea has made several investments in companies, co-leading a $160m round for credit assessment technology provider Wecash in 2018 and backing a $31.6m round for advertising technology developer Nox the same year.
