Korea's Bespin Global gets $100m Series D
Korea-headquartered cloud services company Bespin Global has raised a USD 100m Series D round led by a unit of Emirates Telecoms Group.
The investor, E& Enterprise, formerly known as Etisalat Digital, is considered a leading digital services provider in the United Arab Emirates, where Bespin has offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It contributed USD 60m to the round.
E& and Bespin will form a joint venture to serve customers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan. Bespin CEO HanJoo Lee said cloud adoption across these regions was “about to explode.”
The Series D capital will be used mostly for acquisitions.
Bespin has also agreed on definitive terms by which existing shareholders can invest an additional USD 155m. E& will acquire an option to invest another USD 60m within 18 months.
It follows an approximately USD 76m Series C from SK Telecom and DY Holdings in 2020. A USD 27m Series B came in 2018 following a USD 15m Series A the prior year. Early investors include Altos Ventures, Legend Capital, and Premier Partners.
Bespin focuses on business digitisation and automation through cloud migration, big data and related software-as-a-service offerings. It was the first cloud provider in East Asia to partner with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Aliyun, Tencent Cloud, and Naver Cloud Platform are also supported.
The company has 14 bases globally with an Asian footprint including Korea, Singapore, and three offices in China. Demand across these regions is driven by small to medium-sized enterprises seeking more economic IT options, often with insufficient in-house IT capacities.
Independent cloud start-ups are often preferred by financial services and government clients which can be restricted from using public clouds. Standout activity in this space in recent months includes Quadrant Private Equity exiting Australia’s Arq Group to a SingTel-owned entity for about USD 217m, generating an 8x return.
BDA Partners served as exclusive financial advisor on Bespin's Series D.
More on North 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.