As the year of 2024 comes to an end, we sought insights from prominent figures across the Southeast Asian tech landscape. These leaders reflected on their triumphs throughout the year, sharing valuable perspectives on their achievements and the challenges they overcame. Furthermore, they unveiled their ambitious aspirations, meticulously outlined their strategic plans for 2025, and offered insightful predictions on the trajectory of the tech industry in the coming year.

We talked to Victor Chua, Founding & Managing Partner at Vynn Capital to learn more about the Malaysia-headquartered venture capital firm’s achievements in 2024, its plans and priorities in 2025. He also shared his views on the outlook of the tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia for the new year.

Vynn Capital is a Southeast Asia-focused early stage venture capital firm investing in early stage tech startups. As a sector focused investor, Vynn Capital is eyeing on the supply chain and mobility industries including but not limited to logistics, travel, fast-moving consumer goods.

 

1. How was Vynn Capital’s 2024?

2024 was a year of growth for Vynn. We continued to build our network and knowledge capital around the Mobility and Supply Chain industries, welcomed new Limited Partners and added more portfolio companies to the Vynn-ing team. As a sector focused venture investment firm, we saw growth in local innovation around the industries we cover. Southeast Asia is emerging as a new hub for deep tech innovation, whether it is in the robotics space or energy industry.

We saw greater integration between industries as businesses start to explore new areas of growth. We were able to discover new local gems in high growth markets such as Malaysia and Indonesia, whilst Singapore and Thailand are becoming more important as our investment roadmap. That’s why Vynn Capital continue to play an ecosystem building role to connect markets and industries, with the launch of our Mobility Market Trends report for Southeast Asia and continuous engagement with large international corporations.

2. What are your expectations/aspirations for 2025?

In 2025, we will increase our deployment speed as we continue to see more high-quality investment opportunities within the Mobility and Supply Chain industries. With the increasing interest from our partners from Japan and Korea, we expect to see more collaborations between Southeast Asian startups and North Asian counterparts. This could lead to greater speed of innovation as companies across the regions continue to go through a more active phase of knowledge transfer and sharing.

This is also the reason why we have built partnerships and network with the likes of Marubeni and DHL. Corporate Open Innovation concept will be even more mainstream as we see greater openness for positive innovation within the automotive, cross border logistics and renewal energy sector. The sustainability theme will be greater emphasized.

Vynn Capital will also be riding these positive waves as we see greater demand for early-stage companies to be funded due to the nature of such innovation, where speed and agility plus industry knowledge are valued highly.

3. What are Vynn Capital’s plans in 2025 ? What is the focus in the new year?

Vynn Capital is a firm that strongly believes in the value of disciplined investing and ecosystem investing. As such, we will continue to focus on mobility and supply chain opportunities and continue to invest in startups that are strategic to our investment portfolio.

We will continue to encourage partnerships between our investees and our strategic limited partners and corporations with similar industry interest.

In fact, this is not just a 2025 plan. This is a long term strategy that we have been executing since the inception of Vynn Capital. We see greater opportunity in 2025 when it comes to getting the large corporations to working with younger startups. As such, it is also our focus to continue expand our partnership network, to bridge knowledge sharing between startups and conglomerates.

4. What is the outlook for 2025 for tech ecosystem in Malaysia and Southeast Asia?

It is important to note that Southeast Asia is a diverse market. Each country has their own growth trajectory. What this means is that not all markets will experience similar growth trends. However, as an overview, I see both opportunity and challenge for the tech ecosystem in 2025.

The opportunity – most businesses and industry stakeholders are already on the same page where we believe that innovation and tech adoption are necessities for the continuity of businesses.

The challenge – startups and entrepreneurs has to be ready for competition from not just peers within their respective industries, but also competition and greater demand for product quality from corporate partners/customers. Startups must be able to pitch their value proposition to corporate players who have more industry knowledge and data; and be able to convince these corporations that these startups are the fastest and best way to grow their business.

Again, not all sunshine and rainbow, but I believe this is a year where we will see great founders coming out stronger.

JIA Asset Management joins Vynn Capital Progression Fund as limited partner