Singapore's Qualgro reaches $60m first close on second fund
Qualgro, a Southeast Asia and Australasia-focused VC firm that spun out from Singapore asset manager Gordian Capital, has secured a first close of $60 million on its second fund.
The firm expects to reach a final close of $100 million within the next nine months. Like Qualgro’s $50 million debut fund, the new vehicle will focus on Series A and B rounds for business-to-business (B2B) start-ups specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, analytics, and software-as-a-service.
With the expanded corpus, Qualgro plans to invest up to $8 million per round, up from $3 million from the last fund. The firm also expects greater emphasis on Series B investments, with a focus on businesses that have already demonstrated initial traction and need additional support to achieve scale.
"We are a talent hunter of globally-minded entrepreneurs, who are able to build regional and global businesses, based on true tech advantages," said Heang Chhor, managing partner of Qualgro, in a statement. "We believe that Southeast Asia, with its more than 600 million people and extensive research labs and universities, has enough entrepreneurial and engineering talent to build tech companies with comparable quality to the best of other regions."
Gordian launched Qualgro in 2015 as Qualgro ASEAN before spinning it out last year. The firm has made 19 investments from its first fund, backing companies such as Singapore enterprise software provider Patsnap and Australian cybersecurity player Data Republic, as well as Taiwan-based AI company Appier. It claims a combined valuation of over $1.9 billion for its portfolio companies.
AVCJ Research records 16 full or partial closes so far this year by Southeast Asia-focused venture capital firms, raising over $1.6 billion in total. The total includes Openspace Ventures, previously known as NSI Ventures, which closed its second fund earlier this month at the hard cap of $135 million. Recently launched Singapore-based VC firm Tin Men Capital is also in the market seeking $100 million for its debut fund.
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