Sinar Mas, East Ventures, Yahoo Japan form SE Asia fund

Sinar Mas and Yahoo will participate via their VC arms SMDV and YJ Capital. According to a statement, the three groups have already committed $100 million to the vehicle, which will begin investing in the second quarter of 2018.

The fund, known as EV Growth, will focus on investments at the Series B stage and above, initially making deployments in a range of $5-15 million. It is expected to back 15-20 start-ups in an attempt to address a later-stage venture funding shortfall in Indonesia.

According to the International Finance Corporation, there is an $11 billion annual financing gap in Indonesia’s small to medium-sized enterprise space. Although there has been an acceleration in VC activity in recent years, difficulties such as tighter rules for foreign investors have resulted in most of the existing start-up support coming from more traditionally restricted capital channels such as local corporate and family groups.

East Ventures launched a $30 million Southeast Asia fund in September of last year that will focus primarily on Indonesia but at the seed to Series A stages. This followed only months after raising $27.5 million for a similar early-stage vehicle targeting the region. The firm is expected to leverage its EV Hive co-working space, which has a number of locations in Indonesia.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Fundraising
• Venture
• Indonesia
• Sinar Mas Digital Ventures
• East Ventures
• YJ Capital
• Growth capital