Taiwan's AppWorks raises $150m for Fund III

LPs in AppWorks III include Taiwan Mobile, Axiom Asia, Fubon Life, TransGlobe Life, Hongtai Group, Wistron, Cathay Life, Phison Electronics, and Taiwan’s National Development Fund.

AppWorks claims that strong outside investor interest – the target size was $100 million – was driven by a better-than-expected deal pipeline across the firm’s core themes of artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and Southeast Asia. Many of these opportunities are sourced via the AppWorks Accelerator and the firm’s mentor network.

Fund II performance was also a contributing factor. AppWorks raised $11 million for its first fund in 2012 and $50 million for the successor vehicle in 2014. Fund II is in the top quartile of global PE and VC funds of the same vintage. As of July, total value to paid-in (TVPI) was 3.3x, distributions to paid-in (DPI) was 1.3x and IRR was 34.7%. The top-quartile average was 2.4x, 0.7x, and 26.1%.

The Fund II portfolio includes Hong Kong-based delivery start-up Lalamove, which closed a $515 million Series E round last December at a reported valuation of $8 billion. AppWorks said in a statement that the company recently became a decacorn with a valuation of more than $10 billion.

Fund II also features 91App, an omnichannel commerce solutions provider described as Taiwan’s first homegrown unicorn. The company listed earlier this year and now has a market capitalization of NT$38.2 billion ($1.4 billion). 91App will return double the entire fund corpus on its own.

Fund III is expected to comprise approximately 40 investments: 20 in the Series A through Series C stages, with equity checks starting at $2 million; and 20 seed-stage deals. The firm plans to recruit additional associates and analysts to handle the increased investment activity, which will focus on Southeast Asia.

More than 20 start-ups have already received capital from the new fund, including accelerator alumni and companies led by members of the firm’s mentor network. The latter category includes mobile classifieds marketplace Carousell, blockchain specialist Dapper Labs, e-commerce platform Tiki, social networking business Dcard, and non-fungible token (NFT) pioneer Animoca Brands.

Dapper Labs and Animoca Brands have already achieved unicorn status. In May, Animoca secured $88.9 million in funding at a valuation of $1 billion.

“From a humble beginning, AppWorks is now one of the region’s leading investors, working together with other prominent venture capital firms to cultivate the startup ecosystem in fast-emerging Southeast Asia. On the AI and blockchain front, we have become a major player on the global stage,” said Jamie Lin, chairman and a partner at AppWorks.

To date, the firm has backed 414 active start-ups with an aggregate value of $17.4 billion. They have created 18,591 jobs. The goal for the next decade is to bring 1,000 start-ups into the ecosystem, generating an aggregate valuation of more than $100 billion and 50,000 jobs.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Venture
• Technology
• Fundraising
• Greater China
• AppWorks Ventures
• Taiwan (China)
• TMT
• artificial intelligence
• blockchain