Singapore’s East Ventures and Vickers Venture Partners have been listed among the top-performing funds in the world by Preqin, an alternative assets data source provider.
East Ventures tied at the top with four other venture capital firms—Benchmark Capital from Silicon Valley that invested in Instagram, Twitter, and Tinder; Hong Kong’s Click Ventures, a backer of Spotify; US-based G-Squared that backed Coursera; and Merus Capital that invests in software companies.
Each of the top five firms had three funds in the top quartile for returns as of the third quarter of 2018.
East Ventures has raised USD 135 million over the past ten years and invests in early-stage startups in Southeast Asia and Japan. According to CrunchBase, it has made 202 investments so far, the latest being the seed round of Indonesia-based boutique fitness and indoor cycling studio, Ride Jakarta.
The company’s co-founder, Willson Cuaca, wrote on LinkedIn, “We are just busy doing what we do best, helping young founders and creating value through digital products. But when we look back, we were actually connecting the right dots—and [incidentally] landed on top of the world.”
Some companies of note in East Ventures’ portfolio are Traveloka, Tokopedia, Ruangguru, Shopback, 99.c0, and Sociolla.
Another Singapore-headquartered venture capital firm that made Preqin’s top ten is Vickers Venture Partners.
Vickers had three out of four funds in the top quartile for returns as of the third quarter of 2018, tying with the US’s CRCM Ventures and Israeli fund Pontifax.
Having raised USD 362 million so far, Vickers focuses primarily on angel investments in Asia and beyond. Its portfolio includes companies in life sciences, technology, media and telecommunications, as well as consumer and financial services. It recently led the Series A round in RWDC Industries, a Singapore-based company that develops sustainable biodegradable bioplastic for cutlery.
