South Korean early-stage accelerator and venture capital (VC) Bigbang Angels (BBA) has on Thursday announced its formation of a global investment fund and deepens its footprint in South East Asia, by cementing its partnership with Singapore homegrown early-stage innovation ecosystem enabler, Farquhar Venture Capital (FVC).

Both parties said in a statement that they will collaborate on investments into deeptech startups, and to accelerate the internationalization efforts of early-stage ventures in South Korea and Singapore.

Also, FVC will work towards enabling BBA to establish a Singapore-based venture capital fund for global investments.

BBA Chief Executive Officer Michael Hwang said that that BBA and FVC have been informally supporting each other with venture-acceleration efforts in both countries.

As Korean and Singapore startups are seeking to access other global markets such as Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and the greater ASEAN region, Hwang felt that this is a timely opportunity to synergise the capabilities of both organisations.

FVC Chief Investment Officer Jason Su said that Singapore startups such as Fairphonic and MyFirst were able to achieve sharper product-market fit in North Asia, thanks to the nurturing efforts from leading accelerators such as BBA, and programmes such as the K-Startup Grand Challenge, of which both companies have worked together over the past three years to scout and accelerate best-in-class startups into South Korea.

Su also said that FVC looks forward to enable the BBA Global Venture Fund, which will allow deeptech startups in both countries to scale to greater heights.

The partnership agreement and memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing took place on November 24 at Front1, South Korea’s largest startup hub supported by the Korean Government’s Financial Services Commission.

Established in 2012, BBA is a Korean early-stage cross-border VC and accelerator, which has invested in more than 100 startups in artificial intelligence, AgTech, and other industry verticals.

Three of BBA’s portfolio companies are at Pre-initial public offering (IPO) phase, while BBA has achieved four successful exits to-date.

Established in 2020, FVC is a Singapore-based Venture Capital fund management company, which has invested in more than 20 startups and achieved two exits to-date.

The FVC founding partners were previously from the investments department of NUS Enterprise, which nurtured various ASEAN unicorns such as Shopback, Carousell, and Patsnap.

FVC aims to accelerate the growth of its startup investments through targeted market access with its vast network of medium and large local enterprises across South East Asia, Taiwan and other parts of the globe.

FVC is in the midst of conducting its first close of its second fund, FVC Green Future Fund.

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