Indonesia's Sinar Mas launches smart city VC fund
The real estate arm of Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas has launched a smart city technology fund in partnership with East Ventures, Redbadge Pacific, and Prasetia Dwidharma.
The Urban Gateway Fund is likely to target a corpus of USD 20-30m, according to a source familiar with the situation. Sinar Mas Land will be the manager and receive strategic support from East, Redbadge and Prasetia. The latter will play a leading role, the source added.
Prasetia Dwidharma is an Indonesian telecom infrastructure, IT, and business services outsourcing company with a significant seed-stage VC program. It has backed more than 100 start-ups across Southeast Asia and the US since 2016.
Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction, a longstanding partner of Sinar Mas Land, will also be an investor and strategic partner in the fund. It has significant experience in the construction of industrial plants, power and communications infrastructure, and commercial architecture.
Urban Gateway was conceived as a development driver of BSD City, a planned, functioning township near Jakarta established in the 1980s. Sinar Mas, which owns the 6,000-hectare site, envisions it as a city of the future and a potential technology hub.
“As we transform BSD City into an integrated smart digital city, we remain committed to creating opportunities for start-ups to enrich our ecosystem with their innovative ideas and solutions,” Sinar Mas Land CEO Michael Widjaja said in a statement.
“UGF [Urban Gateway Fund] provides us with an additional, structured, avenue to bring promising start-ups into BSD City, where they will have opportunities to test and refine their solutions.”
Many investees are expected to be sourced from Prasetia’s accelerator program, Escalate. Focus areas will include urban living technologies, mobility and transportation, property technology, data analytics, artificial intelligence, omnichannel retail, and sustainable resources management.
“When Michael Widjaja told me his vision a couple of years ago to transform BSD City into a progressive digital living space, we immediately bought in and since then have been working together to accelerate the vision,” Willson Cuaca, a managing partner at East added.
“East Ventures will continue to be supportive and will push forward digital innovation in Indonesia and BSD City is going to be our huge living lab to implement all the innovation from our ecosystem.”
More on Southeast Asia
Latest News
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey
Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...
Singapore fintech start-up LXA gets $10m seed round
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has led a USD 10m seed round for Singapore’s LXA, a financial technology start-up launched by a former Asia senior executive at The Blackstone Group.
India's InCred announces $60m round, claims unicorn status
Indian non-bank lender InCred Financial Services said it has received INR 5bn (USD 60m) at a valuation of at least USD 1bn from unnamed investors including “a global private equity fund.”
Insight leads $50m round for Australia's Roller
Insight Partners has led a USD 50m round for Australia’s Roller, a venue management software provider specializing in family fun parks.