Jakarta-based venture capital firm Alpha JWC Ventures announced the closing of its second fund at US$123 million.
The fund, which was launched back in 2018, was closed oversubscribed with investors from Southeast Asia, Korea, China, Japan, and Europe — with most investors of the firm’s first fund rejoining the second one.
The second fund started deploying in late 2018 and has been invested in 14 companies so far. The fund’s biggest investment has gone to the grab-and-go coffee chain Kopi Kenangan for US$8 million in November 2018.
“The new fund allows us to be more active and cover more sectors and regions than before. However, we do notice that the digital economy’s landscape, trends, and behaviour have been changing, especially in the past year. Hence, we have to be optimistic, active, yet cautious,” said Co-Founder & Managing Partner Chandra Tjan.
The first fund Alpha JWC Ventures launched was a US$50 million sum back in 2016 and was used to back 23 early-stage companies in Southeast Asia, mostly Indonesia, of which more than 90 per cent of the portfolio companies have received follow-on funding.
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Portfolio companies include the region’s peer-to-peer lending platform Funding Societies, Southeast Asia’s automotive marketplace Carro, and Indonesia’s digital credit card provider Kredivo.
The VC firm claimed that in less than four years, the fund has grown to 3.2 times in Net Asset Value (NAV) and has also made two successful exits. They are Spacemob, which was acquired by WeWork in 2017, and DealStreetAsia, acquired by Nikkei in 2019.
The firm said that it has always prided itself for their hands-on approach when it comes to portfolio management, with more than half of the team working mostly on portfolio value creation from recruitment to marketing.
With 33 active portfolio companies and counting, the portfolio companies have become a network of its own.
Stating that it avoids investing in competing companies, Alpha JWC focusses its approach to “back the right founders and double-down on supporting them throughout their journey.”
Also Read: Alpha JWC Ventures welcomes NS Solutions to its second fund
The firm just onboarded three partners in 2019: former SEA Group Chief Strategy Officer Alan Hellawell, the firm’s first hire and previously principal Erika Dianasari, and former VP of Investment at Creador Eko Kurniadi.
Meanwhile, one of the firm’s founding partner, Will Ongkowidjaja, is pursuing another entrepreneurial journey by building Honestbank, a digital bank in Southeast Asia with a vision to help everyone have access to fair banking –including the unbanked.
Ongkowidjaja is taking a Founding Partner role and shall continue to work together to create value for Alpha JWC family.
After making its mark in Indonesia, Alpha JWC has set up an office in Singapore for wider regional reach. It is also looking to build a presence in Vietnam, even as it continues to focus on its home market.
“We are actively looking at Vietnam whose economy is one of the fastest-growing in the world. We believe that Vietnam is Southeast Asia’s next biggest market and it’s still a greenfield for both founders and investors. So far, we have three investments in Vietnam and several more in our current pipeline,” Tjan added.
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Image Credit: Alpha JWC
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