Cocoon Capital launches $22 million seed fund for Southeast Asia tech founders

Southeast Asia-based early-stage venture firm Cocoon Capital has successfully raised its second fund of $22 million targeting enterprise tech startups around the region.

The fund also announced its initiative of hosting public mentoring hours regularly across Singapore, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and Yangon to help grow the local entrepreneurial ecosystems. The support will be provided in partnership with local accelerators and co-working spaces.

Cocoon Capital’s second fund is targeting the enterprise tech market and has targeted startups within medtech, fintech, insurtech and general deep tech.

Cocoon Capital was founded in 2016 by two of the most seasoned early-stage investors in Asia, Michael Blakey and Will Klippgen. The duo has done more than 60 seed tech investments since 2000 and seen over 15 exits across Europe and Asia. Having funded Asian success stories like PropertyGuru, Tickled Media and iXiGO.com, the partners have proven that early-stage investing can bring record-breaking returns through the right mix of capital and hands-on mentoring.

“Over the last three years, we at Cocoon Capital have seen a radical improvement in deal quality, in particular from the Southeast Asia countries outside Singapore,” said Michael Blakey, managing partner at Cocoon Capital. “The region has gigantic challenges that need to be solved by technology, and we believe we can help founders build and scale their companies faster.”

The tech market in Southeast Asia is accelerating faster than predicted. Google and Temasek reported that the 2018 “e-conomy” was at $72 billion with the B2C ecommerce volume doubling from the year before. The internet economy is on track to reach as much as $240 billion by 2025. Southeast Asia sees businesses moving online and adopting technology to increase sales, productivity as well as governance.

“There is a continuing gap in the region when it comes to hands-on mentoring, in particular at the early stages of a company’s formation, and Cocoon Capital has fine-tuned its operation to provide a tailored and comprehensive support package to our founders,” noted Will Klippgen, managing partner at Cocoon Capital, adding that many founders in the region lack a support network similar to those in Silicon Valley, London or Shanghai, and the fund can change that.

Cocoon Capital’s portfolio is already showing emerging success stories including cleantech company SensorFlow which is soon saving energy across 20,000 hotel rooms.

Medtech company See-Mode has already deployed software predicting future strokes to hospitals in Singapore and is under way to do a global roll-out.

Ticketing company Hapz has seen tremendous growth so far this year and was recently selected as the official ticketing partner for the Singapore National Day Parade 2019.

The Filippino e-merchant Poundit sources high-end electronics and enables safe shopping at competitive prices with high-end customer service.

Meanwhile, Hiip, a Vietnam-based adtech company, has seen strong and consistent revenue growth providing an automated influencer matching platform using social media data and AI. Hiip recently expanded to Thailand and Indonesia.

The newly raised fund has already invested in Myanmar’s leading logistics platform Kargo Myanmar. The company is expanding rapidly by not only enhancing supply chain management for its customers but also improving the productivity and well-being of its drivers.