Singapore-based venture capital firm Altara Ventures announced Thursday the successful final closing of its inaugural fund, reaching a total of $130 million, with support from institutional funds, sovereign wealth funds, financial services institutions, publicly listed corporations and prominent family offices.

Altara Ventures said in a statement the firm has made seven investments to date and will continue to actively deploy capital into Series A and B stage investments in fintech, consumer, enterprise software, logistics, healthcare and education technology.

It opined that these sectors represent the fastest growing market opportunity segments within the ecosystem and will continue to witness new category leaders emerging in the region.

The firm expects 2022 to be an exciting year ahead – it is already in the process of leading and closing another three new investments in the first quarter.

With a dynamic market and geopolitical environment, its partners believe that more entrepreneurs will come up with innovative ideas to solve generational challenges and capture new market opportunities.

Altara Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early stage tech investments. The firm is led by general partners with extensive experience in founding, operating and investing in technology startups in Southeast Asia and globally.

The firm’s name derives from the English word Altitude and the Bahasa word Nusantara, which is the historical designation for maritime Southeast Asia. It reflects the firm’s ambition to be the pre-eminent capital partner for early stage tech entrepreneurs in the region, concurrent with the rapid advancement of technology innovation in Southeast Asia.

Altara Ventures’ strategy is to lead early stage venture financing, backing founders in their journeys to build and scale by leveraging the partnership’s global networks and prior experience in building companies to successful exits. The firm’s anchor investors include leading institutional funds, sovereign wealth funds, financial services institutions, publicly listed corporations and prominent family offices.

The company is led by five general partners, Koh Boon Hwee, Tan Chow Boon, Seow Kiat Wang, Gavin Teo and Dave Ng, complemented by a full team of investment and business operations professionals. Each partner brings extensive experience founding, operating and investing in technology startups, as well as having deep ties to entrepreneurs and investors in Southeast Asia and globally.

As investors, in addition to the Altara Ventures portfolio, they have previously backed more than 100 companies across the Southeast Asian and global startup ecosystems including Appier, Atomwise, Carro, Cialfo, Cred, Icertis, Ninja Van, Razer, StashAway, Twitch and others, which have gone on to publicly list or achieve unicorn status.

For Altara Ventures, the past twelve months in 2021 have been especially fruitful. Besides successfully completing its fundraise, the firm added multiple promising companies to its growing portfolio. This includes Sampingan in Indonesia, the leading digital staffing platform for the gig economy; edtech company Clevai in Vietnam that focuses on K-12 education; digital insurtech platform PolicyStreet in Malaysia; enterprise software as a service (SaaS) company FreeAgent CRM that is transforming the future of work and several others soon to be announced.

These are in addition to earlier investments such as Tonik, the leading digital bank in the Philippines and fintech neobank Stashfin that has a fast growing presence in India.

Staying true to its investment approach and theses, Altara Ventures has led the financing rounds of these companies, with its partners taking up active roles post-investment to guide and support future growth.

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