Venture Debt

Upekkha, an India-based software as a service (SaaS) fund and accelerator, announced Thursday that it has completed the first close ($15 million) of its $40 million Upekkha fund. The funding is led by WestBridge Capital.

Capital Markets Malaysia (CMM), an affiliate of the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), has on Tuesday launched the nation’s first Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) Programm to advance the domestic venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) ecosystem by stimulating corporate investments by larger public listed companies (PLCs)

Singapore-based private market exchange ADDX has fractionalised a venture debt fund by Innoven Capital, a joint venture between Seviora Holdings (a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings) and UOB, bringing down the minimum subscription size for individual accredited investors to $20,000, from $5 million.

Reflecting back on Singapore’s startup ecosystem, we dive into the more popular means of how startups seek financing and how new alternatives such as venture debt and revenue-based financing have become more prominent in recent years.

The Iris Fund, established under the Dana Penjana Nasional program, is co-managed by Hanwha Asset Management and Iris Capital Partners aims to support Malaysian and Southeast Asian startups.

InnoVen SEA Fund has completed its first close of $50 million with InnoVen Capital and will be seeking additional investors to participate in the fund.

Headquartered in Singapore, EvolutionX will provide non-dilutive financing to growth stage technology-enabled companies across Asia, with a focus on China, India, and Southeast Asia.

For founders looking to fund growth in their mobile app and gaming companies, venture debt can seem like an attractive non-dilutive alternative to equity when it comes to funding user acquisition (UA) spend on Facebook, Google, and other ad platforms.