Jungle launches Southeast Asia, India seed programme

Minimum deployments under the programme, known as First Cheque@Jungle, will be USD 2m, spilt 50-50 between equity and uncapped convertible notes. The portfolio will be concentrated, and there will be no minimum ownership criteria.

Jungle will also participate as the lead or co-lead in follow-on rounds of USD 5m-USD 10m, acting without support from any other investors. “We don’t need anyone but the founders and us to validate if we are building something to last,” Amit Anand, the firm's founding partner, said in a statement.

Jungle has made a feature of the idea that it takes first-cheque risk, claiming to have done so for regional VC darlings including Kredivo, Moglix, and Livspace. Ramakant Sharma, founder of Livspace and two other Jungle portfolio company founders will support the new programme as venture builders.

Jungle raised USD 600m for its fourth Southeast Asia-India fund last year, easily beating a target of USD 350m and more than doubling the size of the previous vintage. Asked whether it made sense to split the pot into seed and later-stage funds, Anand said such a course of action was unlikely for Jungle.

“Our belief is always that you must be best at something if you want to be the number one player in any market. Founders come to us when they want their first cheque, and there’s a reason for that,” Anand told AVCJ.

“The early stages are business building times, when the founder is still thinking, ‘Who can help me?’ They know that in our concentrated portfolio, they have literally 3-4 times more capital than their peers. That value proposition is what has made us among the top 2-3 early-stage venture firms in the region.”

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• South Asia
• GPs
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Singapore
• Jungle Ventures
• seed