Do startups in Asia interest investors more? (Startup Asia preview)

Tom Clayton of Bubbly will be one of the panelists at Startup Asia Jakarta 2013.

Fundraising often takes on a glamorous sheen of achievement — friends fawn over the entrepreneurs, we media entities clamor to interview them. But it’s as much as the start of another (arduous) journey as it’s a milestone indicating potential progress. After all, you’ve managed to convince strangers to add to the zeroes of your startup’s bank account.

While focusing on building the business with money from customers should be more important than obtaining money from investors, fundraising is often needed to scale the company and obtain exponential growth. However, even if you want to raise money from investors in Asia, sometimes deserving companies just cannot find willing investors — the amount they seek could be a few hundred grand too much or a few million dollars too few.

This coming 21-22 November in Indonesia, we’re going to be drilling into the fundraising process from both sides of the table at Startup Asia Jakarta 2013 in a panel discussion titled “How to raise money from investors”.

We’ll also be discussing the topic in light of the sort of an alliance among several Indonesian VC firms, the dearth of larger investment rounds (read here, and here) in the Southeast Asia region, and the hoo-ha about unfriendly foreign investment rules in Indonesia.

We will bring to this table entrepreneurs who have collectively started, grown and brought in millions in revenue and funding for their companies, and also investors who have invested across various Internet entities in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

One serial entrepreneur we’re excited to have is Tom Clayton. Now running his fourth tech startup, Tom has raised over US$60 million in funding from top tier investors for Bubbly, (including Sequoia Capital, JAFCO, and SingTel Innov8), making it one of the largest VC-backed startups in Southeast Asia. Tom has spent 12 years in Asia, been involved in numerous high tech companies, and raised US$160 million in total across his startup ventures.

Adding to the entrepreneurial voice is Stefan Jung. Stefan co-founded and runs Rocket Internet Asia, the Asian arm of one of the world’s largest company builder with a presence in over 40 countries with over 25,000 employees in their ventures around the globe. Across Rocket Internet, firms like J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Kinnevik, Summit Partners, Holtzbrink Ventures, among others, have been convinced to pour a total of US$1.3 billion into their various Internet outfits.

But Stefan at this panel will also play on the other side of the fence: not only has he grown Rocket Internet Asia, Stefan also leads the US$200 million Global Founders Capital fund in Asia started by the same Samwer brothers of Rocket. They recently made their first Asian investment in Traveloka, a travel startup in Indonesia that had also been invested in by East Ventures, an Indonesia-Singapore VC. (Disclosure: East Ventures also invested in Tech in Asia.)

Another player in the Indonesian market is Martin Hartono, a true son of the country. He started and runs Global Digital Prima Venture (GDP Venture), a vehicle that focuses on investing in Indonesian Internet companies. Under its wing are quite a few big startups including Kaskus, the largest forum site in Indonesia, and Blibli, an e-commerce site. An offshoot of GDP Ventures is Indonesia’s first tech and digital incubator, Merah Putih which has invested in Lintas.me, Infokost.net, and DailySocial.net, and others.

Lastly, we’ll have Saemin Ahn of the US$10 million fund Rakuten Ventures. Their first investment is a as yet undisclosed Singapore startup and are looking to invest primarily in startups from Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia. Apart from investments, Rakuten itself has also grown its Singapore office to further its expansion plans in Asia.

With the past year having seen much more consolidation and increased acquisitions in the Southeast Asia region (Rakuten’s USD 200M acquisition of ViKi being one prime example), are we seeing more interest from investors in the region and Indonesia specifically? Have we shown that perhaps there are more startups who have the potential growth and capacity to absorb investment? Has has anything changed from last year?

If you have a question for the panel that you’d like to ask, feel free to submit a question using our widget. Or if you haven’t gotten your tickets to Startup Asia Jakarta on November 21 and 22, you can still get them now. (Editing by Terence Lee and Josh Horwitz)