Singapore’s East Ventures takes over EV Growth
EV Growth, a joint venture between Singapore’s East Ventures, Indonesia’s SMDV and Japan’s YJ Capital, is dissolving its co-GP structure, with East Ventures taking over as the sole manager.
The EV Growth team and part of the SMDV team will join East Ventures. This will include Roderick Purwana, a managing partner at EV Growth and SMDV, who will become a managing partner at East. The move is expected to result in East having the largest venture team in Southeast Asia, with more 60 staff members and eight partners.
“We have very strong synergy between the EV Growth and East Ventures ecosystem,” Willson Cuaca (pictured), a co-founder and managing partner at East, said in a statement. “This new arrangement will strengthen efficiency and enable us to run with more boldness and speed. We will be able to assist entrepreneurs in a better, smarter and wiser manner – fully stacked to unlock their potential.”
YJ Capital CEO Shinichiro Hori, who was EV Growth’s third partner alongside Purwana and Cuaca, will remain on the EV Growth investment committee. It coincides with YJ, formerly known as Yahoo Japan Capital, rebranding as ZVC. SoftBank Group subsidiary Z Holdings, the parent of Yahoo Japan, acquired Japan’s Line, an IT provider with an active VC program, earlier this year with plans to invest almost $5 billion in technology over the next five years.
EV Growth was set up in 2018 and closed its first fund at the hard cap of $250 million in late 2019, beating an initial target of $150 million with support from SoftBank. It invests at the Series B stage or later, making deployments of $5-15 million per deal and sourcing targets in part from the existing East Ventures portfolio.
The fund had generated an IRR of 27% as of year-end 2020. An early exit came last year when regional ride-hailing and mobile services giant Gojek acquired Indonesian point-of-sale software provider Moka in a deal said to be worth around $130 million.
The EV Growth portfolio currently comprises at least 20 companies across Southeast Asia. They include sector leaders Gojek, Grab, Traveloka, and Tokopedia, as well as logistics start-up Waresix, rewards platform ShopBack, fintech provider Koinworks, e-commerce app Sociolla, and financial portal Stockbit.
East was founded in 2009 to make seed and Series A investments across a range of IT-related sectors with a strong geographic focus on Indonesia. The firm, which also maintains offices in Indonesia and Japan, closed its sixth flagship fund in 2019 at $75 million. Its latest vehicle, styled as Fund VIII, reached a first close of $57 million last year on a target of $88 million.
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