Qualgro and Gordian Capital today unveiled the spinout of the Qualgro ASEAN Fund I with a corpus exceeding US$50 million from the Gordian Capital platform. The fund succeeded in attracting investments from both Japanese and Asian multinational corporations.
The investment strategy of the fund is centered on the Series A and Series B funding of B2B startups engaged in areas of data, fintech, and SaaS for small and medium enterprises. In terms of geographic preference, the venture capital firm also holds a particular affinity for Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
So far, the fund has made 14 investments in various portfolio firms, with its smallest investment ticket to date being US$750,000 and its largest at US$3 million. Its investment portfolio includes Appier, Mobikon, Data Republic, Nura, and Oway.
Additionally, the company also has an investment theme that concentrates on the marketplace, and SaaS-based ventures operating in the health, education, logistics, communication and financial technologies sectors.
“After building a portfolio, and with demand growing from investors, we felt it was time to build our own operation and hire a team to support our endeavors,” said Jason Edwards, the co-founder at Qualgro.
“While on the Gordian platform we were able to build our own brand in a regulated environment. This has allowed us to launch our fund activity very effectively,” he added.
Established in 2005, Gordian Capital is based in Singapore and operates as a platform for institutional teams looking to launch private equity, venture capital, real estate, private credit, and hedge funds.
The firm operates as an independent fund specialist and manages in excess of US$1 billion. Its has early mandates from Brown Brothers Harriman and AMP Capital as well as investments by both Swiss and Japanese pension funds as early as 2006 and 2007, and in 2017, investments from DFI and ERISA investors.
Heang Chhor, the Founder and Managing Partner of Qualgro said, “Since inception, Gordian Capital provided a regulated, stable, cost-effective and highly professional ecosystem in which we could concentrate on our skill set – research, portfolio construction and working with our investee companies.”
“As anticipated, we reached a stage in our evolution where it made sense to establish our own regulated entity. Thanks to Gordian’s fantastic support, the transition was a well-planned and seamless process,” Chhor added.
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