Southeast Asia’s busiest VCs

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Hi readers,

This tweet caught my eye the other day: “Founding > VC, always.” If you ask me to choose between the two, I would probably say the same.

Why would I pick being a founder, you might ask? It just seems like founders have a lot more fun building startups. You don’t see investors talking about their personal growth or making celebratory announcements on LinkedIn as much as founders do, do you?

Perhaps investors simply prefer to be hush-hush about such events. But we decided to make some noise today and talk about venture firms.

Today we look at,

• The investors making the most deals in Southeast Asia
• A news app that raised US$60 million
• Other newsy highlights such as how Alibaba and Tencent are considering opening the great wall around their services and travel startup Yanolja raised US$1.7 billion

PREMIUM SUMMARY

The investors writing the most checks to Southeast Asian startups

Here’s an interesting stat: Funding for tech startups in Southeast Asia has grown 50x from US$130 million in 2010 to US$7.7 billion in 2020. That’s a lot of money. So which firms are funding these startups? We might not have the numbers for the last decade, but we have the next best thing: a list of investors that have made the most deals in the last 24 months.

• 500 Startups has gone above and beyond its name, investing in more than 500 startups over the years. The US-based venture firm has made a ton of deals since 2019: Among the businesses that it backed recently are Vietnamese edtech startup Virtual Internships and investment app Infina.
• Wavemaker Partners is making waves and has clinched the second spot on our list. Some of the Singapore-based company’s recent investments include GrowSari, a business-to-business ecommerce platform based in the Philippines, and Vietnamese e-bike startup Dat Bike.
• Entrepreneur First takes its name seriously and was no.1 on our list in October 2020. Today, the UK firm is in third place – not too shabby!

Dive into the full listicle with all 100 VCs: These are the most active investors in Southeast Asia’s startups

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