News

SINGAPORE – January 9, 2024 – Asia Partners, a Singapore-based growth equity investment firm, is today announcing the final close of its second fund, Asia Partners II LP (the “Fund”), at US$474,000,000 in commitments.

With this close, Asia Partners has now reached an important milestone: US$1.0bn in assets under management. Notably, given the current macroeconomic backdrop, Fund II is 23% larger than the Firm’s inaugural fund, Asia Partners I LP, which had US$384,000,000 in commitments and completed its final close in March 2021.

Asia Partners is focused on the intersection of three key themes:

• The long-term growth potential of Southeast Asia, a region with almost 10% of the world’s population, and Southeast Asia’s increasing economic connectivity to the rest of Asia and the world.
• The rapid growth of innovative technology and technology-enabled businesses in the region, many of which are platforms with pan-regional or global aspirations.
• The scarcity of growth equity capital for these companies, particularly in the $20 million to $100 million investment size range, often described as the ‘Series C/D Gap’ between early-stage venture capital and the public capital markets.

More than 9% of the Fund’s capital is from Asia Partners’ employees and Advisory Board members; this is amongst the highest ratios in the industry and signals a strong degree of alignment with Limited Partners.

The Limited Partners in the Fund include institutional investors, family offices, and individual investors across six continents. Returning investors include the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Financial Investments Corporation (FIC) from the United States, the Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG) from Germany, and Generation Capital from Canada. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) joined as a new investor in Fund II, among others.

“At Asia Partners, we believe in the potential for growth equity to accelerate economic growth throughout Southeast Asia and beyond, “said Oliver M. Rippel, a Partner of the firm and a member of the Investment Committee. “We continue to believe this decade will be a golden age of entrepreneurship and innovation for Southeast Asia, and we are focused on accelerating that progress.”

The Asia Partners Advisory Board is chaired by Mr. Hsieh Fu Hua, the former CEO of the Singapore Exchange, the co-founder of the PrimePartners Group, and the Chairman of the National University of Singapore.

“Southeast Asia is highly strategic for international investors, given its importance in global trade, supply chain management, rising affluence and the increasing digitization of daily life,” said Mr. Hsieh. “Opportunities abound for our regional economies to be transformed by the combination of entrepreneurial innovation and growth equity.”

“Asia Partners is deeply committed to supporting the growth of Southeast Asia’s next generation of entrepreneurs,” said Nicholas A. Nash, Managing Partner and a member of the Investment Committee. “We look forward to continuing our investment program and to applying our leadership team’s and Advisory Board’s collective experience to helping our companies expand, both geographically and strategically.”

Asia Partners’ legal advisor on the fundraise was Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Southern Right Capital Limited and Monument Group acted as placement agents.