Quest Ventures, a top-ranked venture capital firm in Asia, announced the first close completion for its $50 million venture capital fund.
This first close represents more than half of its fund target for its second fund, Asia Fund II.
Quest Ventures Fund I investments include Carousell, ShopBack, 99.co, Carro, StyleTheory, SGAG/ MGAG/ PGAG, Glife, Xfers, and others. The performance of Fund I is in the top decile when compared against publicly available rankings for venture capital funds.
With Fund II, Quest Ventures now has the support of entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, Asia family business founders, family offices, and institutional investors across more than a dozen industries and nationalities.
Two notable institutional investors participated in the fund - Pavilion Capital from Singapore, and QazTech Ventures from Kazakhstan. Pavilion Capital is a Singapore-based investment firm that has backed funds in North Asia and Southeast Asia.
"We believe that opportunities in Southeast Asia are growing, and we aim to play an important role in the venture capital ecosystem here (working with Quest Ventures)," said Mr Tow Heng Tan, Chief Executive Officer of Pavilion Capital.
Kazakhstan’s national economic initiatives have seen increased business activities between Central Asia and Southeast Asia. This is its sovereign wealth fund’s first investment in a venture capital fund in Asia, and is widely seen to be tapping into Quest Ventures’ experience in emerging Asia and in developing innovation ecosystems.
The fund will invest in start-ups across Southeast Asia and emerging Asia at the Post Seed and Series A stages. Already present in fast-growing economies such as Vietnam, it will strengthen and expand its footprint to other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Myanmar and The Philippines. It will also launch an accelerator in Kazakhstan to jumpstart the region’s digital economy. Quest Ventures will continue to back driven founders with disruptive business models that can create new sustainable value to the end customer.
“The cooperation of Kazakhstan with Singapore’s leading venture fund is an important step in bringing together the innovative ecosystems of Southeast Asia and Central Asia. This partnership with Quest Ventures and Pavilion Capital will enable Kazakhstani start-ups to secure important investments, improve competencies, and gain access to global markets,” said Mr Adil Nurgozhin, Chairman of the Board of Directors at QazTech Ventures, the Kazakhstan sovereign wealth fund.