Malaysian venture builder LaunchPad raises $6m

Malaysia-based LaunchPad, which builds companies using its own ideas, today announced it secured US$6 million in funding from unnamed investors. It says it will use the money to launch new tech ventures, fund its existing portfolio of startups, and for the first time, invest in startups that aren’t its own.

The new round follows the US$1 million pre-seed round that the venture builder raised in December last year.

Unlike incubators and accelerators, LaunchPad doesn’t look for startups to fund by running some sort of competition that culminates in a demo day. Instead, the company, using its internal teams and resources, develops ideas into ventures. LaunchPad also takes applications for its bootcamp, where graduates are offered full-time positions or given the chance to co-found startups that will now be part of LaunchPad’s portfolio.

With the new funding, however, it says it will start investing in non-LaunchPad startups.

“When we set off we were inspired by the Rocket Internet model of starting proven tech businesses. What we came to realize is that a lot of ideas proven elsewhere don’t necessarily work in Southeast Asia, and the space is becoming somewhat saturated,” explains founder and CEO Asim Qureshi.

“We have expanded our focus to more original ideas, which allow us to potentially tap into the global market,” he adds, without giving specifics.

Asim Qureshi.

LaunchPad supports ventures in the pre-seed to seed stages, putting in the initial investment, which typically ranges from US$50,000 to US$100,000. Currently, it has six startups it created in-house – online job platform SkootJobs, payroll software-as-a-service company PayrollPanda, employee time and attendance tracking cloud application PunchinPanda, T-shirt crowd buying platform Teeyoot, mobile dining app Menyoo, and Pisheyab, an online job platform focusing on the Middle Eastern market.

Each startup gets access to shared resources, which include marketing, tech, accounting and HR, and critical hands-on support – all crucial to driving growth.

Asim previously founded real estate portal ThinkProperty, which was acquired by iProperty in 2010. He is a former vice president at investment banks Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.