Jungle Ventures closes second fund of $100 million

Singapore-based venture firm Jungle Ventures said it had successfully closed the second fund of $100 million. The new fund is 10 times the size of its first fund, raised in 2012. Ratan Tata, interim chairman of Tata Sons, is a special advisor to the firm. 

The fund has raised money from both existing and new investors, including institutions and strategic family offices from Asia and the US. These include Temasek Holdings, International Finance Corporation, National Research Foundation of Singapore, Hubert Burda Media and leading family office investors such as the Kewalram Chanrai Group and Khoon Hong Kuok. 

The fund will largely target Series A and Series B investments primarily in southeast Asia, besides businesses in India and Australia particularly where such businesses would benefit from expansion into southeast Asia. 

Amit Anand, founding partner of Jungle Ventures, said this was a significant milestone for southeast Asia’s fast-growing start-up ecosystem. With a team of 15 investing and operational professionals, it offers an ‘operations as a service’ model. 

Jungle invests across all early-stage start-ups and has investments in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and other hot beds of entrepreneurial activity in Asia. 

Since its inception in 2012, it exited companies mainly through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to global brands. Among its portfolio companies, ZipDial was acquired by Twitter, Travelmob by HomeAway, Voyagin by Rakuten, and Momoe (Fund II portfolio) by Shopclues. The exits yielded three times the average return of the amount invested at an average internal rate of return of 200 per cent. It has said M&As will continue to dominate the exit landscape in the region.

In 2016, it invested in consumer-lending start-up FinAccel and Smartkarma, a collaborative market place for Asian investment research and analysis. Jungle's first fund of $10 million is fully invested. Notable investments from the first fund include Travelmob, ZipDial, Voyagin, Pomelo Fashion, iMoney, CrayonData, CatchThatBus and TradeGecko.