Sweef's Asia women-focused fund makes debut investment

Sweef LPs including Pædagogernes Pension (PBU), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Emerging Market Impact Investment Fund (EMIIF), and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) also contributed.

Sweef’s maiden fund was launched in 2020 by SEAF Southeast Asia Management with a target of USD 100m. The fund had reached a first close of USD 16.2m in early 2021, when the fundraising process was stalled by the pandemic and the spin-out of Sweef as the fund’s independent manager.

The fund had raised USD 35m as of last November, when Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade came in as an investor. AIIB provided USD 10m as recently as last March. Other LPs include Global Affairs Canada, Tattarang, an impact investor set up by Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest, and Australia’s Scalzo Family Office.

Teky provides education in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), as well as after-school programmes for children aged five to 18 in five cities across Vietnam. It has partnered with more than 45 schools across the country to deliver courses to some 25,000 children.

The idea behind is that many workers in the region will need to learn new skills – including coding –as technology changes that employment landscape. Sweef pointed to research from the International Labour Organization finding that 137m workers – a fifth of Southeast Asia – will lose their jobs due to automation, robots, and artificial intelligence in the next two decades.

“We see this investment contributing great foundational skills for children, some of whom currently have limited exposure to STEAM,” Jennifer Buckley, founder and managing director of Sweef, said in a statement.

“We share [Teky founder] Ms. Dao Lan Huong’s vision to help more girls see what’s possible, take up education and pursue professional careers in STEAM. We look forward to building on this partnership with Teky and working with them to demonstrate value creation opportunities linked with women’s economic empowerment.”

Buckley spun out the Southeast Asian gender-lens investment unit of SEAF to create Sweef in 2021. It aims to invest in high growth impact opportunities that deliver competitive risk-adjusted returns and improve outcomes for women and communities in ways that benefit the region. Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines are the preferred geographies.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Consumer
• Expansion
• Vietnam
• SEAF
• Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
• Education
• Impact investment