1/1/2019 – BEENEXT, a venture capital firm based in Singapore is looking to make a minimum of six investments in Indonesia in the new year.
BEENEXT operating partner Nao Ito said that the new deals will seize opportunities and entrepreneurial talent in the Southeast Asian market, on top of continuing the firm’s active investments in a market where it has already been backed by nine companies.
The firm, which also claims to have made six other investments in the country through affiliate entities, was an early backer of local unicorn Tokopedia. Other Indonesian startups in its portfolio include fintech firm Amartha and B2B marketplace Ralali.
Over the past year, BEENEXT has managed to achieve notable exits from some of its investments, namely O2O commerce startup Kudo that was acquired by ride-hailing giant Grab and payments startup Midtrans that was acquired by Grab’s rival Go-Jek.
For its next investments, Ito said BEENEXT would be targeting companies operating in the healthcare and agriculture sector.
“We have been interested in marketplaces, consumer tech, fintech, and SaaS domain and would love to seek more investment opportunities in healthcare tech and agriculture tech as well,” he said.
While BEENEXT will be flexible in terms of investment ticket size for Indonesian companies, Ito said the firm will continue to adopt early entry into developing startups.
“We are more than happy to participate in the journey from a very early stage, and trying to contribute to the founder with our experience in building and developing the various types of digital platform crossing the region as founder/ entrepreneur by ourselves,” Ito said.
Founded by Japanese entrepreneur and ex Chief Executive of BEENOS Teruhide Sato, BEENEXT went public listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers market in 2004.
At BEENEXT, Teruhide Sato holds the position of managing partner, along with fellow Japnese investor Hironori Maeda.
Despite years of investment experience, BEENEXT only launched its first established fund last year after announcing it had spun off its US$75 million plus fund from Singapore P2 firm Gordian Capital.
Since launching the fund, the VC firm has backed numerous companies in different markets, the latest being its investment in Indian micro-delivery startup Milkbasket and Vietnamese enterprise SaaS platform Base.vn earlier this month.
