Rebright Partners launches $20M fund for Indian startups, wants to be Japan’s gateway to India

Japan’s Rebright Partners today revealed that it has launched a new US$20 million fund for India. This early stage VC, which has the backing of leading Japanese tech corporations, has extensive investments in East and Southeast Asia, including an incubator in Indonesia. So its commitment to India is good news for startups in the country.

Seasoned entrepreneur Takeshi Ebihara, who founded Rebright Partners four years ago, explains to Tech in Asia the unique value that a Japanese VC brings to Indian startups:

Most of our fund investors are large Japanese corporations in the IT sector. They are very keen to enter the Indian market. For that, they would like to have partnerships with local startups. At this moment, most of them do not have any activity in India, so they need us on the ground. We like to be the gateway between these two markets.

Rebright Partners has already played such a role in Southeast Asia. Five companies from its portfolio raised later rounds of investments from Japanese corporations, points out Ebihara. “Most of them are strategic investors, whose expectations aren’t just financial. They want to have partnerships with those companies in Southeast Asia. We have facilitated that and we want to do the same thing in India as well.”

Mobile first, mobile only

The number of smartphone users in India is expected to be second only to China by next year. The new India fund will, therefore, focus on consumer-focused mobile-only or mobile-first startups.

Ebihara has been visiting India frequently in the past 10 months, most recently as a judge at the first Tech in Asia pitch event in India last month. He sees great value in the mobile space as well as the tech caliber of Indian startup founders.

“There are so many experienced, matured founders who have been working in large technology corporations like Microsoft, Google, and so on – because India has branches of those tech giants. We have seen a lot of alumni of those global tech companies. I have met of lot of founders who have better working experience compared with startup founders in other regions. Other Asian countries do not have so many branches of global tech companies,” says Ebihara.