AVCJ

Aura launches Australia-focused VC fund

  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
  • Save this article  

Aura Group, an Australia and Singapore-based fund management and investment business, is raising an Australia-focused venture capital fund with a target corpus of A$30 million ($21.8 million).

The fund will be structured as an early-stage venture capital limited partnership (ESVCLP), which means investors can quality for zero capital gains tax and tax offsets, Aura said in a statement. It added that the decision to launch a VC fund was a natural progression following a string of early-stage direct investments.

The firm has backed a string of start-ups, including Catapult Sports, iBuyNew.com.au and Finsure Group. Aura invested A$3.6 million in Catapult, which develops wearable athlete tracking technology, in 2013, and it has full ownership of online property marketplace iBuyNew and mortgage aggregation service Finsure. It claims to have generated an average unrealized return of 647% on its early-stage deals.

Most of these investments were made through Disruptive Capital, Aura's technology arm, which is listed on the Australia Securities Exchange. Aura itself is organized into three operating divisions, covering corporate advisory services, wealth management and principal investment. Earlier this year it received strategic commitments from two Asian family offices, one from Thailand and the other from Hong Kong.

  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
  • Save this article  

More on Australasia

Latest News

world-hands-globe-climate-esg
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey

Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...

  • GPs