Jafco invests $12m in Singapore adtech firm AdAsia

It is the GP’s largest-ever company commitment in a single investment round and is said to be the largest disclosed Series A for any Asian adtech company outside of China. The capital will be used for product development, increasing the size of the team and expanding the operational footprint.

“In the last few years of my stint in Southeast Asia, I have never come across a company like AdAsia Holdings,” Yoshiyuki Shibusawa, president and CEO of Jafco Asia, said in a statement. “This company has a very high growth trajectory due to their unique model. Both founders also have proven track records in the industry, exemplified through the company’s progress in just one year of operation.”

Established in April last year by Kosuke Sogo and Otohiko Kozutsumi, AdAsia aims to improve the performance of marketers, advertisers and publishers through a single desktop and mobile platform. It employs digital marketing consultants and in-house creative teams to provide end-to-end support across online advertising and influencer marketing, a highly focused method a customer targeting.

The company plans to expand its staff from around 90 to 400 people by the end of 2018. New product development will focus on integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies into existing service areas. Operations are currently spread across Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Taiwan. An expansion into China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines and Malaysia is planned within the year.

Although Google and Facebook are currently considered the dominant players in digital advertising globally, the Asian market has proven sufficiently fragmented and underserviced to provide investment opportunity to private equity.

Recent activity includes a $1.4 billion commitment by Orient Hontai Capital in US-based mobile marketing platform provider AppLovin, which is seeking to increase its China exposure. In a similar deal earlier this year, the China-based PE arm of advertising technology company Innotech International Group acquired US data aggregation platform Ad-Juster.

Jafco Asia is a Singapore-based division of Japanese venture capital firm Jafco, which manages 37 funds and claims some JPY433 billion ($3.9 billion) in commitments. Last year, it reached a first close on its fifth global VC and buyout fund with JPY41 million in commitments.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Media
• Singapore
• JAFCO
• TMT
• Consumer
• Asia