Wavemaker Partners first announced the fund during the visit of legendary investor Tim Draper to Indonesia

Early stage venture capital firm Wavemaker Partners today announced the closing of its second Southeast Asia (SEA)-focussed fund at US$66 million. The fund is the fifth that the firm has launched since its establishment in 2003.

The fund closed at 32 per cent above the original target of US$50 million. It also includes a US$10 million investment by International Financial Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group. IFC’s investment in the fund is part of its wider effort to support early-stage entrepreneurship, innovation ecosystems, and drive growth in emerging markets in Asia.

AddVentures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of Thailand-based business conglomerate Siam Cement Group (SCG), has also participated in the fund, which marks its first investment in Wavemaker.

Wavemaker also named the participation of Singapore’s state investor Temasek in its press statement.

The firm announced that it is closing the fund during the visit of legendary investor Tim Draper to Jakarta, as the firm is the Southeast Asia representative of Draper Venture Network (DVN). Draper himself had announced his shifting focus from China to Indonesia during his visit.

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Wavemaker stated that it differentiated its approach in SEA by investing “more than” 80 per cent of its fund in seed stage business-to-business (B2B) and deep technology companies led by founders with deep domain expertise.

“We’ve come a long way since we started in Singapore five years ago. In many ways, we went through the same growing pains that startups do. Yet we are encouraged by the results we’ve achieved so far and the response to the fund by investors,” said Wavemaker Partners Managing Partner Paul Santos is a press statement.

From the fund, the firm has made follow-on investment on its portfolio, such as blockchain-based financial platform Coins.ph, cloud communications platform Wavecell, and mobile fashion marketplace Zilingo.

The firm also stated that three more companies are expected to close its Series B before the end of the year.

It also stated that some of its portfolio companies have achieved more than US$3 million in annualised revenue, such as free-floating car-sharing platform Smove, intelligent marketing solutions Ematic, and expert-driven knowledge-sharing platform Lynk.

The firm’s notable exits in SEA include Art of Click (by Xurpas), Caarly (by Carousell), Gushcloud (by Yello), Luxola (by Sephora), and Pie.co (by Google).

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Image Credit: Wavemaker Partners

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