VCs look beyond ad-driven business models - AVCJ Forum

Shane Chesson, partner at Northstar Silicon Island, said that leveraging changes in consumer and corporate behavior means targeting innovation across multiple categories. This ranges from consumers transacting in different ways to companies making the transition from pencil and paper or Excel to enterprise software.

"It all creates more value and number of eyeballs is not the best way of calculating that," he said.

William Wijaya, regional manager at Fenox Venture Capital, cited software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a business model that has succeeded in finding an alternative to dependency on advertising, typically charging enterprises on a monthly basis. He compared it to a digital agency model.

Asked to single out start-ups in their portfolios that show particular potential, VC investors at the forum put forward a number of consumer and enterprise-focused plays. Chesson identified online grocery service RedMart and restaurant booking site Chope, while Wijaya went for online rental portal 99.Co and Leslie Loh, managing director at Red Dot Ventures, pointed to stakeholder engagement company TSC and peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace iCarsclub.

Amit Anand, co-founder and managing partner at Jungle Ventures, identified Crayon - a classic big data analytics provider founded in Singapore - and Malaysia-based financial comparison website iMoney. "There are no organized channels to streamline these products," Anand said of iMoney. "There is one company in Australia doing the same thing in Australia - and only Australia - and it's got a $300 million market cap."

The implication is that start-ups targeting multiple markets in Southeast Asia have greater scale potential - and iMoney has indeed spread to Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong. However, in a still nascent VC market, Chesson warns that start-ups must not get ahead of themselves.

"There are some great entrepreneurs that need to be patient," he said. "You need to last it out for a year or two extra."

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• Topics
• Venture
• Early-stage
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Consumer
• TMT
• Southeast Asia
• Jungle Ventures
• Venture
• Red Dot Ventures
• Fenox Venture Capital