Singapore’s EV Growth makes final close of debut fund at $250m

Singapore-headquartered venture capital firm EV Growth announced that it has made the final close of its reopened first fund at $250 million, exceeding the initial target of $150 million.

DealStreetAsia reported in May that the firm, a joint venture between Sinar Mas, East Ventures, and Yahoo! Japan, has made a final close of the fund at $200 million. The firm, however, reopened its inaugural VC fund in November due to the continued interest in the vehicle from potential limited partners, or investors.

“This milestone is the result of the firm’s admission of new LPs, which include several Asian-based family offices and two of Asia’s largest sovereign wealth funds, including Temasek,” the firm said.

The fund, which has secured commitments from investors including SoftBank Group Corp, Pavilion Capital, and Indies Capital, is already 50-per cent deployed in 20 deals.

Some of the fund’s recent investments include Indonesian edutech Ruangguru, beauty-tech Sociolla, regional cashback startup Shopback, Vietnamese e-commerce Sendo, Indonesian SME lender Koinworks, micro-retail tech startup Warung Pintar, mobile point-of-sale startup MokaPOS, co-working space provider CoHive, and on-demand warehouse startup Waresix.

EV Growth also joined investors, including Singapore’s GIC, backing a $420-million financing for Indonesian unicorn Traveloka. The firm said 80 per cent of its portfolio companies are Indonesia-based, where the fund’s IRR stands at 36 per cent. “We plan to deploy $325 million for Southeast Asian startups combining active funds size, for both seed and growth stage,” said EV Growth managing partner Willson Cuaca.

Speaking at DEALSTREETASIA’s Indonesia PE-VC Summit 2019 in January, Cuaca had said that EV Growth would maintain the pace that East Ventures has recorded over the last couple of years, which is over a deal a month, and sometimes even a deal a week.

East Ventures, which has launched six funds in the last seven years, is one of the VC pioneers in Indonesia and among the 10 most consistent top performing VC fund managers in the world. The firm has scored 30 notable exits over its last three funds and claims to have provided seed investment to 70 percent of Indonesian startups that have gone on to raise Series A funding.

Operating from Singapore, EV Growth shares its office with China and US-focused venture capital major GGV Capital. Other VC funds in the market include Vertex Ventures, which recently hit the first close at $230 million for its SEA and India fund, B Capital Group and Jungle Ventures.

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