Dear readers,
Where do I even start?
Perhaps we can begin with this chart, published in November last year in The Business Times, which paints a bleak picture of venture capital returns in Southeast Asia.
It certainly got me thinking about how tenuous the connection is between countries within Southeast Asia, ASEAN, or the now-forgotten “Greater Southeast Asia.”
The notion of Southeast Asia as a singular market has always been fragile and much criticized. But it wasn’t until recently that the threads linking the region started to snap.
It turns out that unless you’re Grab, Sea Group, or ByteDance, realizing the Southeast Asia narrative is a luxury.
Even if you’re a company that’s worth over US$700 million – like PropertyGuru – excelling in all the major markets of Southeast Asia may be a tall task.
Alibaba, too, struggled with tackling the diverse region with its acquisition of Lazada, which has since fallen behind rivals.
The smartest route, perhaps, may be to treat Southeast Asia as stops along the journey, rather than the final destination. Or the best path may be the one that bypasses the region altogether.
After all, Southeast Asia isn’t exactly brimming with cash. A founder of a bootstrapped software company in Singapore once told me that his VC-funded rivals were foolish to expand into Indonesia – there’s hardly a market for paid software there, he said.
In any case, this tech funding winter has caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth. It has also caused tech companies to reassess their plans.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
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