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Monk's Hill raises $100m for second Southeast Asia VC fund

Monk's Hill raises $100m for second Southeast Asia VC fund
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Singapore-based Monk’s Hill Ventures has confirmed a final close on its second Southeast Asia fund with $100 million in commitments.

Temasek Holdings is the anchor LP. It also backed Monk's Hill's debut fund, which closed above target at $85 million in 2016. Additional support came from YJ Capital, Telstra Ventures, Cisco Systems, and Singapore's National Research Foundation. 

The latest vintage features LPs such as family offices, corporations, endowments, and foundations. Peng Ong (pictured), a managing partner at Monk's Hill, said his firm has benefited from the China-US trade war diverting investor attention toward Southeast Asia. Fund II was launched in 2018 with a hard cap of $150 million. 

"For Fund II, we will continue to invest in great founders who are addressing sizeable market opportunities in tech at the early-stage, mainly Series A in Southeast Asia," Ong, told AVCJ. "We focus on investing in founders with a plan to scale up profitably in major economies including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines."

Monk's Hill invests across a range of technology-enabled categories, including cloud computing, big data analytics, and internet applications. Standout portfolio companies include C88 Financial Technologies, a retail and small business financial education provider in the Philippines and Indonesia, and KKday, a Taiwanese tourism platform that has raised at least $32 million from the likes of Alibaba Group and Line. 

Monk's Hill positions itself as a partnership of entrepreneurs and has made a number of recent hires to expand deal sourcing and value-add capabilities.

These include the appointment last year of Michele Daoud, formerly a financial analyst at Google, and Justin Nguyen, a gaming engineer and entrepreneur, as partners in Singapore and Vietnam, respectively. This followed the engagement of Mohd Ridzwan (Reez) Nordin, formerly of Malaysia's Khazanah Nasional, as a venture partner in Kuala Lumpur. 

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