Vertex Ventures reaches final close of fifth India and Southeast Asia venture capital fund

Vertex Ventures, a venture capital investor backed by Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings, marked the final close of its fifth India and Southeast Asia-focused fund at $541 million (Rs 4,488 crore), surpassing the target fund size of $450 million.

The final close comes after a year since Singapore-based Vertex began raising commitments for its fifth fund.

The fifth fund has seen an increase in its corpus of approximately 80% compared to its previous fund. Fund IV, which was raised in 2019, had a corpus of $305 million.

In terms of limited companions (LP) portfolio, Fund V is backed by existing and new LPs, including sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, corporations and family offices in Asia and Europe. The new limited partners include the Japan Investment Corporation (JIC), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the DEG (German Development Finance Institution).

“Our previous funds have had good cash-on-cash returns and are outperforming benchmarks. This track record led most of our Fund IV investors to return as investors in Fund V and increase their allocation. In addition, we also expanded our total investor base,” said Ben Mathias, managing partner of Vertex companies Southeast Asia and India.

Notably, the fund corpus includes a dedicated co-investment package of $50 million to co-invest alongside the main fund in startups led by female founders.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India is part of the Vertex Holdings global fund network. Vertex Holdings, one of the largest venture capital investors based in Southeast Asia, has $5 billion in assets under management across its funds and has about 200 active portfolio companies.

Vertex had previously surpassed its fourth fund’s fundraising target of $280 million in 2019. Temasek had fully funded Vertex’s first and second funds, raised in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Its third fund reached final close in 2017 with $210 million in commitments, also surpassing its target corpus.

It has currently made around 80 investments in early growth stage startups in Southeast Asia and India across sectors such as enterprise technology, fintech, consumer internet, digital health, sustainability, mobility and others.

In March, the company exited Internet of Things (IoT) startup Flutura Decision Sciences and Analytics. As per VCCircle estimates, the company earned a multiple of 3-3.5 times invested capital (MOIC), which translates to an internal rate of return of around 20-25%.

Vertex had invested in startups such as online meat delivery unicorn Licious, audio content platform KukuFM, digital lending platform Kissht, direct-to-consumer (D2C) retail platform Ace Turtle, online retailer Kapiva of ayurveda-based D2C brand for used two-wheelers BeepKart, third-party management platform Certa, digital banking infrastructure provider Signzy and hospital chain Ayu Health.