Data Vantage: Capital-rich Singapore continues to lure startup funding
As Southeast Asia’s premier financial hub, Singapore continues to lure startups from the region and beyond that seek to raise venture capital.
More than $150 million in equity investment was secured last week by startups with registered entities in Singapore, data compiled by DealStreetAsia — DATA VANTAGE shows.
Video game developer Virtuos, which operates in Asia, Europe and the US, raised $50.3 million from a new investor last week. The investor is understood to be an affiliate of an Asian private equity firm. Visit DATA VANTAGE for details about its fundraising, shareholding structure and financial performance.
Bangladesh-based B2B commerce platform ShopUp secured $74.4 million in a round led by US venture capital fund Valar Ventures last week, bringing the total funding raised by its Singapore-registered entity to $100 million.
New investor Valar Ventures injected $45 million in the round and is now the largest shareholder in ShopUp. VEON, a Nasdaq and Euronext Amsterdam-listed provider of connectivity and internet services, holds the second-largest stake in ShopUp.
Another new investor in the round was Naspers Ventures, the VC arm of South Africa’s internet and media giant Naspers.
Top shareholders in ShopUp
Naspers Ventures also joined an investment round for Borneo, a data security platform with offices in San Francisco, Singapore and Bangaluru. Registered in Singapore as Securezapp Pte Ltd, the platform raised $15 million from a group of investors, including Vulcan Capital, Wavemaker Partners and Lytical Ventures.
Regional springboard
Often seen by tech startups as a springboard to penetrate markets in Southeast Asia and South Asia, Singapore attracted a record number of fundraising deals in the first half of this year.
Startups in the city-state inked at least 223 deals in the first six months of this year with combined total proceeds of $5.65 billion. This compares to 140 deals and $2.15 billion, respectively, in the same period last year.
Our latest quarterly deal review shows that Singapore-based startups generated 48.3% of total proceeds raised in Southeast Asia in the second quarter, followed by Indonesia (26.6%) and Vietnam (15.7%).
In the second quarter, Singapore-based startups also dominated fintech deals, garnering a 49.9% share of the $1.04 billion raised in total proceeds by startups in the sector.
Singapore-headquartered insurtech firm Bolttech was the largest fundraiser among fintech startups in Q2 with $180 million, followed by Philippines-based Voyager Innovations ($167 million) and Singapore-registered MatchMove Pay ($100 million).
The second quarter also saw a flurry of investments in blockchain-based fintech, also known as decentralised finance (DeFi), which accounted for 22 out of 61 fintech deals.
Trusting Social, a Singapore-based company that provides credit scoring solutions for fintech firms, turned a profit in 2020. It recorded $10.3 million in profit after tax, a marked improvement from $21.1 million in total losses in the previous year.
Advanced Micro Foundry, a commercial silicon photonics foundry services and solutions provider, reported a net loss of $22.3 million in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, as its revenues slid 3.1% year on year. According to our calculations, the company has raised $111.7 million in total funding to date and was latest valued at $321.8 million.
The Singapore entity of Indonesian fishery and marine platform Aruna issued new shares worth $1 million last week to Ridge Global Holdings Limited as part of the former’s $35 million Series A round. The latest investment brings the total funding in Aruna to $36.3 million and its valuation to $83.4 million.
Entrepreneur First-backed Portcast raised $3.2 million in its latest funding round joined by Imperial Investment Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Trail Mix Ventures and Innoport, the venture capital arm of German-based Schulte Group. The startup uses AI technology to predict how cargo moves across the world and enable data-driven decisions.
Singapore-based collaborative e-commerce enabler platform DiMuto has raised $1 million from private equity firm First Alverstone Partners. The company recently teamed up with OPAL Payment to develop a payment system that will allow its customers to track the movement of goods that have been paid.
Originally published at https://www.dealstreetasia.com.
