Cisco Investments, the investment arm of Cisco Systems Inc., and Eight Roads Ventures, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Limited, announced their investments in SeedPlus, a seed stage venture fund based in Singapore. With these investments, SeedPlus further deepens and expands its global network of partners.
SeedPlus was launched by Jungle Ventures, a Singapore-based venture capital firm, and has already been backed by SGInnovate, Accel Partners (India) and Mr.Ratan Tata’s RNT Associates, among others. IFC, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group and the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets, had also recently announced its participation with a US$2 million investment.
“The SeedPlus investment aligns with IFC’s Venture Capital group’s strategy to invest in venture capital funds that support innovative technology companies across emerging markets. Today, there are several fast-evolving, transformative technologies disrupting key industry sectors, enabling entrepreneurship and innovation to flourish in emerging markets, particularly in Southeast Asia, which we see as a growing market for us this year,” said Pravan Malhotra, IFC’s venture capital lead for Southeast Asia and Asia Internet investments.
Supported by Google and PwC Singapore, SeedPlus is focused on investing in and helping build Asia’s most disruptive start-ups across software-as-a-service (SaaS), financial technology, artificial intelligence, cyber security and other emerging technology areas. SeedPlus invests up to S$1 million in each startup in Asia.
“The goals of SeedPlus align with Cisco Investments’ mission of supporting startups with disruptive technology and unique business models. Asia has tremendous potential, and our investment in SeedPlus will give us additional access to the vibrant growth of the region,” said Rajiv Menon, managing director of Corporate Development at Cisco and head of Cisco Investments, Asia Pacific & Japan.
SeedPlus is focused on investing in companies that target large addressable markets in Asia or globally. Some recent examples include Moglix, an Indian B2B e-commerce platform specializing in the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) industry, Mimetic.ai, a Singaporean technology startup responsible for creating Evie, an artificial intelligence (AI) scheduling assistant, and Homage, a Singapore-based startup that connects in-home caregivers with elderly people seeking assistance.
“With this investment, we look forward to working closely with the SeedPlus team and backing exciting ventures with the potential to scale across Southeast Asia and the broader Asia market” said Raj Dugar, Managing Partner, Asia at Eight Roads.
The fund is run by three operating partners — Michael Smith Jr, who was CTO at streaming service HOOQ, former Spotify product manager Gabriel Lundberg and Tiang Lim Foo, who led Evernote’s market development in Asia Pacific. The firm also announced the joining of ChirayuWadke as a Partner leading IoT investments. Prior to this Chirayu led strategic business development for a number of product areas at Google in Mountain View.
