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Below are some snapshots from my research on the State of South East Asia (SEA) Technology Startup Ecosystem 2016 publish on 7 Feb 2017. The full insights is available on Slideshare here.

In one section of this research, we dived deep into the details active investors in SEA in 2016, i.e. they had at least 1 investments in 2016 and more than 1 deals before 2016. This is intended to be an education piece for myself and aspiring founders to understand the funding landscape in SEA.

Notes:

• Past investment records don’t guarantee an active year in 2017. This only tells you who have been active. For example, at the time of writing the report, SPH media decided to discontinue its Plug and Play accelerator program [Source] and JDFI also decided to close its accelerator program to explore corporate innovation [Source]. However, that will only be a small minority of them (5% perhaps?), so the list is mostly good!
• The same logic above also applies to investment verticals. Most investors in SEA are vertical-agnostics and open to any solid investment opportunities.
• This is very likely not the comprehensive list of investors since it only covers announced deals. Please feel free to point out if there are any missing investors that you would like to point out by commenting here or writing to me privately at rictan0@gmail.com.
• Within SEA, investors have mostly invested in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. Many of the investors are foreign-based with an office in SEA. They include Accelerators, Incubators, Seed Fund, Venture Capital (VC) Firm, Corporate Venture Capitals, Private Equity firm and Sovereign Wealth Fund.
• There isn’t hard and fast rule to define terminologies in wonderful (and confusing) world of private funding. Here is my take:
  1. Seed Round: Product Development Stage – still searching for product-market fit. A typical seed round in SEA is <$1.5m.
  2. Venture Round: Commercialisation Stage – Product market fit achieved, time to reach the mass market. Typically known as Series A & B, range: $1.5m-$20m.
  3. Growth Round: Expansion/Scaling Stage – through market expansion, new product development, acquisition. Typically known as Series C and above, range >$20m.
• Round sizes are not indicative of check sizes, many of the investors do co-invest. For example, an early-stage VC fund could have co-invested with a PE firm in a large round with a check that is 50x smaller than the PE’s, i.e. $2m in $100m round.
• For any further information (correction, feedback, comment, tips etc), please feel free to reach out at rictan0@gmail.com.

For a spreadsheet view, please click here.

State of South East Asia Technology Startup Ecosystem is available on Slideshare here. It covers the SEA private and public capital flow in tech sectors, exit landscape analysis (IPOs, M&A or staying private and profitable) and sectors to watch in 2017.

We collaborate with founders/investors/journalists in SEA tech sector for advisory work and sector deep dive, please feel free to reach out at rictan0@gmail.com.