Openspace Ventures to raise $200m for third fund

Singapore-based venture capital firm Openspace Ventures said it’s looking to raise US$200 million for its third fund, which it quietly launched earlier this year.

With the new fund, the firm will continue looking for series A and B investments in Southeast Asia, Hian Goh, founding partner at Openspace Ventures, told Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Openspace Ventures

It was reported last year that the VC firm was also looking to launch a US$300 million growth opportunity fund. Goh told DealStreetAsia, which first reported about the company’s new fund, that the firm is still in talks with its limited partners for co-investment efforts.

Founded in 2014, Openspace Ventures said it has more than US$225 million assets under management from a range of global and regional institutional investors. It currently has 27 portfolio companies, covering business-to-customer and business-to-business technologies in local, regional, and global markets.

Most recently, it co-led a US$10 million series B funding round for Finnomena, a Thailand-based digital wealth management platform. Its other investments include Indonesian unicorn Gojek, healthtech platform Halodoc, fintech firm FinAccel, communication SaaS firm Whispir, and health insurance company CXA Group, among others.

Openspace Ventures, formerly known as NSI Ventures, closed its debut fund at US$80 million. In 2018, it raised US$135 million for its second fund from Singapore sovereign fund Temasek and US private equity firm StepStone Group.

As of December 2018, Southeast Asia made up less than 1% of the US$3.6 trillion in total global private capital and venture capital assets under management (PEVC AUM), according to Preqin. But the industry is growing, with the combined PEVC AUM in the region rising by 8.6% from US$26 billion to US$28 billion between 2017 and 2018.