Singapore IP fund invests $30m in fintech acquisition platform

Tryb currently has stakes in two businesses: ASEAN payments provider MC Payment and freight and commodities contract manager Chinsay. It also has partnerships with technology incubator SGInnovate and growth investment firm Blibros. The plan is to build out an ecosystem of financial technology companies involved in small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) lending, trade finance, and micro-credit.

MIF’s capital will be used to accelerate this buy-and-build strategy. Targets will be selected based on their ability to enable the origination, syndication, and distribution of credit across ASEAN. Tryb also collaborates with local entrepreneurs on the development of technology projects.

Tryb noted in a statement that less than 60% of SMEs in ASEAN have access to bank loans and approximately half of these companies are unserved or underserved by financial institutions. It added that the lack of cloud-based banking technology infrastructure within smaller financial institutions represents a strong growth opportunity for digital distribution channels.

“Underpinned by its strong leadership team, the company is poised to lead the transformation towards the digitization of ASEAN’s credit markets, with the aim of sustaining its competitive edge through its management of its defensible and proprietary technology and know-how,” said Kelvin Tan, director of investments at MIF (pictured, center, with Veiverne Yuen, left, and Markus Gnirck, right, the co-founders of Tryb).

MIF’s mandate is to back late-stage start-ups and growth-stage companies with globally competitive technology, encouraging them to use Singapore as a base from which to achieve scale across multiple markets. It was launched last year by IP Value Lab, the enterprise engagement arm of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), and local GP Makara.

The fund has a corpus of S$1 billion ($716 million) sourced from strategic investors within and outside Singapore. It will invest S$30-150 million across 10-15 companies in sectors including urban solutions, advanced technologies, financial technology, consumer, alternative energy, and healthcare. Previous investments include MyRepublic, a provider of broadband internet and related services that wants to expand in Asia.

MIF is part of efforts to drive private sector involvement in a 10-year plan, announced by the Singapore government in 2013, to turn the country into a global IP hub. The idea is to become the location of choice for IP transactions and management, IP filings, and IP dispute resolution.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Expansion
• Financials
• Technology
• Singapore
• Makara Capital
• M&A
• Growth capital