Jungle Ventures, the Singapore-based Venture Capital firm, has announced that it is raising $100 million for its Asia fund. The firm has already raised about $65 million and is looking to close the round in a couple of months.
The VC firm is now stepping up its game in Asia. Earlier, it focused on initial stage investments but with the new funds coming in, it is now looking to invest in Series A and Series B round of funding in addition to seed funding.
The raised funds are mostly from Singapore and US-based investors, which include Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek; National Research Foundation; Thakral Group; and the family office of Kumar Malavalli, founder of Brocade Systems.
With this second fund, Jungle Ventures is most likely to invest $3-5 million on average, in Series A round, focusing on enterprise software and consumer Internet start-ups in India and South-East Asia. It is planning for about 20 investments from second fund over the next two years.
Founded by Anurag Srivastava and Amit Anand, the investment firm has made investments in 30 Asian startups, including the likes of LiveSpace, Tradegecko, CrayonData, Fastacash and Travelmob. It follows ‘operations as a service’ model for its portfolio companies.
It has already witness three exits in the companies it has invested through its old fund. Zipdial, a mobile marketing and analytics company was acquired by Twitter, TravelMob was acquired by HomeAway while IMD acquired eBus.
In recent times, Jungle Ventures has appointed some high-profile individuals. Recently, it appointed David Gowday, former Yahoo M&A head as its Managing Director to provide deep expertise to their portfolio companies in key areas such as strategy, marketing, product management and recruiting, particularly in the early stages, to support high growth ventures in consumer internet and enterprise technology. Prior to that, it appointed Ratan Tata as a special adviser.
Amit Anand, Managing Partner of Jungle Ventures, said,
We’re a pan-Asian fund and our knowledge and expertise in operating in India and in Asian markets outside of India are a big draw for entrepreneurs and LPs (limited partners) alike. We’ve also seen three exits from our first fund, so our track record speaks for itself. Combined with the massive potential that India offers, we increased the fund size.
Recently, many VC firms has raised new funds to invest in booming startup scenario of India. Sequoia Capital is currently raising a whooping $800 million for India focused fund, while Kalaari Capital announced $290 million India fund. Last month, Lightspeed Venture Partners raised $135 million in its first ever India fund.
