Singapore’s Near to go public via SPAC deal with $1b market cap

Near Intelligence Holdings, a data intelligence platform, will be listed on the Nasdaq, following a merger with publicly traded special purpose acquisition company KludeIn I Acquisition Corp.

Anil Mathews, CEO and founder of Near / Photo credit: Near

The merger will see the combined entity be worth nearly US$1 billion in market capitalization. It will be traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker “NIR.”

The deal is expected to generate US$268 million in gross proceeds, assuming there are no redemptions by KludeIn’s public stockholders and a private placement of US$95 million of KludeIn common stock is successful before the deal is completed.

KludeIn has also secured US$100 million in a committed equity financing facility from CF Principal Investments.

Near’s existing equity holders, including Sequoia Capital, Telstra Ventures, JP Morgan, and Greater Pacific Capital, have agreed to convert their entire stakes in the privacy-focused data intelligence platform into equity in the new entity.

Founded in Singapore in 2012, Near will now be headquartered in Southern California, with global offices and coverage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and Southeast Asia. The offices are led by Anil Mathews, the founder and CEO of the company.

The firm supplies customers with aggregated anonymized data from 1.6 billion unique user IDs across 44 countries and combines it with AI-driven modeling to understand consumer behavior.

Mathews said market demand for data around human movement and consumer behavior to understand changing markets is growing exponentially, having an untapped total addressable market worth US$23 billion.

See also: How Near became Southeast Asia’s most valuable marketing tech startup