East Ventures raises $27.5m for SE Asia fund

According to a statement, backers included prominent family offices and entrepreneurs across Asia. It is the firm's fifth fund to date and is expected to primarily target founders that are in the idea stages of the company building process or have a product with early traction.

The fund aims to shift its focus in verticals as the ecosystem matures and clear category winners have emerged. It will leverage East's "EV Hive" co-working space, which has two locations in Indonesia that run about 100 public events a year.

Founded in 2010, East operates across offices in Singapore, Jakarta, Tokyo and San Francisco, with 80 active portfolio companies in Southeast Asia. From 2015 to 2016 its inbound deal leads increased 133% to 774. This volume is expected to double in 2017, although the number of investments made is planned to remain steady at around 20 per year.

Southeast Asia has attracted a flurry of pan-regional VC fundraisings in recently months, with Jungle Ventures reaching a $100 million final close for its second vehicle in December. Golden Gate Ventures and Monk's Hill Ventures both closed Southeast Asian funds last year at $50 million and $80 million, respectively. Meanwhile, US-based accelerator 500 Startups has launched its second seed fund focused on the region, with a targeted corpus of $50 million.

According to Temasek Holdings, Southeast Asia is leading the growth of internet users in Asia and is expected to have an internet economy worth more than $200 billion by 2025.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Fundraising
• Early-stage
• Technology
• East Ventures
• Singapore
• seed
• Venture