Cocoon launches $20m Southeast Asia VC fund

The fund, which has reportedly raised about $13 million so far, will target deep tech, fintech, and medical technology verticals across Southeast Asia. The firm’s first vehicle was set up in late 2016 with a corpus of about $7 million and has made 10 investments.

Investors include Vulpes Innovative Technologies Investment Company, UK seed fund Playfair Capital, Martin Hauge, a partner at Swedish VC investor Creandum, and Jani Rautiainen, co-founder of Cocoon portfolio company PropertyGuru. Other backers include Oliver Tonby, chairman of McKinsey & Company in Asia excluding Greater China, and Michelle Yong, director of Singapore’s Aurum Investments.

“With the billions of dollars available in venture capital in the region, only a fraction is targeting seed-stage companies and Cocoon Capital seeks to help fill this gap”, Will Klippgen, a managing partner at Cocoon, said in a statement.

“The funding gap is even more prevalent outside Singapore, which is why we are expanding our presence into neighboring countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, all of which having tremendous potential.”

Klippgen, who is also the founder of Singapore InseadAlum Ventures, co-founded Cocoon with Michael Blakey, director of UK-based Avonmore Developments, in 2016 with a view to supporting B2B, B2C, software-as-a-service, e-commerce and fintech companies through deployments of up to S$1 million ($730,000) per deal.

In addition to PropertyGuru, which received a S$200 million investment from KKR last month, Cocoon investments include SensorFlow, a Philippines-based company focused on reducing energy consumption in commercial buildings, as well as Singapore-based IT company Dexecure and medical start-up See-Mode Technologies.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Venture
• Fundraising
• Singapore
• seed
• Financial Services
• healthcare