Match made in Southeast Asia: Wavemaker to manage Ardent’s startup portfolio

Photo credit: geralt.

Europe is getting ready for what might be the first of many painful divorces, but here in Southeast Asia, the week started out with a wedding. Thai venture capital firm Ardent Capital is merging its portfolio of companies with that of prolific international VC Wavemaker Partners.

Ardent’s venture portfolio of about a dozen companies will now be managed by Wavemaker.

Under the deal, Ardent’s venture portfolio of about a dozen companies will now be managed by Wavemaker, whose Singapore-based arm has closed around 50 deals in the region. These companies include fashion ecommerce website Salestock, online grocery seller HappyFresh, gamification platform Playbasis, and fulfillment and logistics business Floship.

“Wavemaker Partners will take care of the day-to-day portfolio management, like we do for our other funds,” Wavemaker’s director of strategic partnerships, Amar Odedra, tells Tech in Asia. “We will provide support mainly through introductions to our network and sharing insights we’ve gained from managing our 50 plus other portfolio companies in the Southeast Asia region and 150 more in the US.”

Wavemaker invests in early-stage startups and has so far seen a number of high-profile exits on companies it backed, including Luxola, Gushcloud, and Pie.

Riding two horses

Ardent has been operating on two fronts to date. Its VC-based business involves investment into companies with as little hands-on involvement in them as possible. The Ardent Labs side focuses on building companies from the ground up, remaining a major shareholder in them, and being heavily involved in their day-to-day.

Startups like ecommerce services provider aCommerce, women’s fashion ecommerce business Orami, and SME-focused ecommerce website Bizzy, are examples of Labs-grown companies.

CEO Adrian Vanzyl tells Tech in Asia: “We got to a point [at the end of last year and beginning of this one] where it was obvious that these two models required quite different management styles,” he says. Ardent was structured as a holding company, which meant it wasn’t ideally suited to be a VC.

So the decision was made to spin the venture capital-related portfolio to another company. Wavemaker made sense, Adrian says, because of the close relationship between the two companies. Wavemaker had joined Ardent’s first external round of funding back in 2013 and managing partner Paul Santos had joined its board. Together, they have invested in companies like Indonesia-based cash back app Snapcart.

Adrian Vanzyl, co-founder and CEO of Ardent Capital.

What this means for shareholders

To minimize the load of many potentially messy share transfers, Ardent remains the legal owner of its portfolio, which Wavemaker will manage as part of its own. Wavemaker will receive a share of the profits from any returns for its part as a manager and decision maker, but otherwise it’s going to be business as usual for the startups and their shareholders.

“This is a very good outcome for the Ardent shareholders because they remain the owners of the shares,” Adrian says. “We think that over the next three to five years, that strategy is going to maximize the return for our shareholders.”

Stronger together