Indonesia's Alpha JWC closes Fund III at $433m

The fund was launched in April, with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) making an initial commitment of $20 million. Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners is also an LP.

Fund I closed at $50 million in 2017 and was deployed into 23 early-stage companies in Southeast Asia, mostly Indonesia, more than 90% of which have received follow-on funding. Fund II closed at $143 million in 2019 and has been invested in 30 companies. Assets under management now stand at $630 million.

Alpha JWC claims to be Southeast Asia's best-performing early-stage venture capital firm with total value-to-paid-in (TVPI) of 3.72x and an IRR of around 37% for Fund I. Fund II has recorded TVPI and IRR of 3.45x and 87%.

The firm has generated nine exits, including Singapore-based business media site DealStreetAsia, which was acquired by Nikkei in 2019, and regional co-working space network Spacemob, which was sold to WeWork in 2017. Earlier this year, it exited Vietnamese enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider Base.vn to local technology giant FPT Corporation.

Fund III will continue the firm's sector-agnostic approach, with a focus on financial technology, SaaS, consumer brands, and B2B services. With its larger corpus, the ticket size is expected to increase from hundreds of thousands of dollars up to $60 million in multi-stage funding.

The new fund has invested in seven companies to date across Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam. The geographic mandate will continue to focus on Indonesia, but there will be expanded scope for investments in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines.

"The momentum in Indonesia's digital economy is in full swing. We are seeing companies with accelerated funding rounds. Companies are also showing a better monetization plan and execution, which leads to stronger fundamentals," Jefrey Joe, a co-founder and general partner of Alpha JWC, [pictured right] said in a statement.

"For investors, this means the path to exits is becoming more predictable, either via SPAC [special purpose acquisition company], M&A, or IPO in both global and local exchanges, which in turn creates higher liquidity and attracts even more investors into the region. The majority of our portfolios secured follow-on funding within just one year of our initial investment."

Alpha JWC's portfolio companies have collectively raised more than $1 billion dollars this year, with three attaining unicorn status. They are Carro, a Singapore-based used car marketplace, Ajaib, an Indonesia stock-trading platform; and Indonesian consumer credit platform Kredivo, also known as FinAccel.

Kredivo agreed a $2 billion merger with a US-listed SPAC in August. In all three cases, Alpha JWC was the first institutional investor.

A further 11 companies are said to be nearing unicorn status, including grab-and-go coffee chain Kopi Kenangan, B2B marketplace GudangAda, healthy consumer goods producer Lemonilo, and P2P platform Funding Societies. These four are all positioned as market leaders in their respective sectors regionally or in Indonesia.

"In the past year, we have seen the increasing quality of founders as well as in the start-ups' world-class teams," Chandra Tjan, a co-founder and general partner of Alpha JWC, [pictured left] added.

"There is a new wave of new entrepreneurs like we have never seen before, not only in the capital but also in the smaller cities. The success of more mature start-ups has inspired them to build more for the country."

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Fundraising
• Venture
• Technology
• Indonesia
• Alpha JWC Ventures
• IFC
• Morgan Stanley