This Japanese VC may be new to Indonesia, but it’s making an impact by backing disruption

Yasuhiro Seo, general manager of IMJ Investment Partners

Yasuhiro Seo, general manager of IMJ Investment Partners, describes his company as an infant in Southeast Asia, but also as a firm that prioritizes disruptive business models and growth potential over anything else.

IMJ Investment Partners was born from Japan’s IMJ digital marketing agency. Seo says he was previously working on web development projects for the company before the now 18-year-old agency decided to launch a venture capital arm. Seo recalls the moment when the then-CFO of IMJ Yuji Horiguch called him into his office to discuss looking at Southeast Asian startup investments.

“He understood that I didn’t have a finance background but I had to believe in myself. If I could optimize my experience in digital marketing with my new career in venture capital, that would be pretty unique,” explains Seo.

IMJ Investment Partners’ Southeast Asian portfolio currently includes names like Indonesian ecommerce giant BukaLapak, mobile agriculture company 8Villages, fintech portal iMoney, pharmaceuticals tech firm mClinica, and real estate site UrbanIndo, among others.

See: mClinica raises funds to jumpstart Asian expansion

Vetting disruptive players one-by-one

According to Seo, IMJ Investment Partners’ preferred ticket size in Southeast Asia is not strictly defined, but he believes US$100,000 to US$500,000 is a good range for investing in early-stage startups in emerging markets like the Philippines and Indonesia.

Seo did not comment on how much money IMJ Investment Partners currently has in its fund, but confirms that IMJ has created a separate fund specifically for startups in the region. “As a VC, we are a one-year-old baby here. Now we have ten startups in Southeast Asia and all of them are awesomely unique,” says Seo. “That has started helping us get attention from potential LPs of our fund.”

While IMJ Investment Partners is relatively new to the budding startup scenes of Jakarta and Manila, Seo claims that simply meeting founders one-by-one on a grassroots level has been the most effective strategy for him while sniffing out promising investments.

Seo claims that at the rate IMJ Investment Partners is going, he will have met and analyzed several hundred startups in Indonesia by year’s end. In the case that Seo doesn’t fully understand a founder’s business model, he says that he makes a habit of going on a “field trip” with the company to get a better idea of its investment potential.

Founders to keep an eye on