Investors Directory

ADB Ventures is the venture-investment facility of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral development bank founded in 1966 and headquartered at 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila — meaning ADB Ventures itself is genuinely Philippine-based, unlike most other names on this list. It was launched in 2020 to "scale technology solutions for impact in Asia and the Pacific," positioning itself as an ImpactTech investment platform rather than a conventional commercial VC fund. It operates alongside related ADB initiatives such as the SEEK Fund (which offers seed funding of up to roughly US$400,000) and NextFin Asia. The firm's own portfolio/investments page (adbventures.com) currently redirects to a lapsed-domain marketplace listing rather than a live site, and adb.org itself blocks automated access — so specific named investee companies could not be independently confirmed for this profile via any accessible source this session. Its LinkedIn profile states current geographic activity concentrated in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Indonesia) and Japan, within its broader Asia-Pacific mandate.

💰 Check size: $100K–$500K

AgFunder is a global venture capital firm founded in 2013 by Rob Leclerc and Michael Dean, headquartered in San Francisco with a second office in Singapore covering Asia dealflow. The firm was built specifically around agrifoodtech — investing in deeptech aimed at bottlenecks in food, agriculture, and human and planetary health — and reports roughly US$300 million in assets under management across a portfolio of 100+ companies spanning four continents. It also runs AgFunderNews, an industry publication it founded to build awareness of the agrifoodtech investment category. AgFunder's portfolio spans robotics and farm automation, alternative proteins, climate and carbon-focused agtech, and biotech, with companies such as Bear Flag Robotics, Juicy Marbles, and DeHaat among its more recognized names. Its own portfolio page lists one clearly Philippine-focused company, Kita (described on AgFunder's site as "digitizing agrifood supply chains in the Philippines") — a genuine, if singular, Philippine connection within an otherwise globally distributed book.

Genting Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Genting Group, the diversified Malaysian conglomerate founded in 1965 with global operations spanning leisure and hospitality, casinos and integrated resorts, plantations, property development, biotechnology, cruise lines, and energy. Genting Ventures is headquartered in Singapore (Genting Centre, 3 Lim Teck Kim Road) and backs early-stage startups whose innovations align with its parent group's strategic interests. (Note: this session could not independently confirm Genting Ventures' exact founding year, disclosed fund size, or a verified list of specific portfolio companies through any live, fetchable source — the firm's own website, gentingventures.com, was consistently unreachable to this session's tools (connection resets on every attempt), and no dedicated Wikipedia article or accessible database profile exists. Stated honestly rather than guessed; should be confirmed directly before publishing, ideally via a direct visit to gentingventures.com.) The firm's publicly stated sector focus spans gaming and entertainment, leisure and hospitality, agriculture, web3, and energy — a mix that closely mirrors Genting Group's own diversified business lines, consistent with a corporate venture unit investing for strategic alignment rather than a purely financial-returns mandate.

Leave a Nest Capital is the venture investment arm of Leave a Nest Co., Ltd. (known in Japan as リバネス), a Tokyo-headquartered "knowledge manufacturing" company founded in 2002 that describes its mission as connecting science and technology to real-world problem-solving. The parent company operates seven development divisions spanning education, human resources, R&D, startups, regional development, manufacturing, and strategy, and is best known internationally for TECH PLANTER, a global deep-tech startup pitch and acceleration program it runs across multiple countries. Leave a Nest Capital's own exact founding year, total fund size, and named fund managers were not disclosed in the sources reviewed for this profile. Leave a Nest has a confirmed, genuine presence in the Philippines: regional business press has reported the firm running a TECH PLANTER startup pitch contest in the Philippines and disclosed plans to open a local branch office in Metro Manila, alongside stated expansion into Thailand and Taiwan — evidence of real, ongoing Southeast Asian activity rather than a purely Japan-domestic operation. The firm's investment activity is tightly linked to its TECH PLANTER program, which functions as a deep-tech deal-sourcing and founder-development pipeline feeding into direct investments by Leave a Nest Capital.

MDI Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Telkom Group, Indonesia's largest telecommunications company, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. The firm is led by CEO Nicko Widjaja, with Fajrin Rasyid (also CEO of Telkom) serving as Chairman. Rather than operating a single fund, MDI manages a family of vehicles including a US$500 million digitalization fund, the US$150 million Centauri Fund co-managed with KB Investment, and the US$40 million Arise Fund co-managed with Finch Capital, and reports having generated more than US$708 million in cumulative synergy value with Telkom's business by 2023. MDI describes itself as a "global multi-stage VC firm for local founders," investing from seed through growth stage across the digital economy with a deliberate emphasis on creating operational synergies between its portfolio companies and Telkom Group's own telecommunications and enterprise infrastructure. Its disclosed portfolio spans fintech, healthtech, edtech, and enterprise software companies primarily in Indonesia, with regional activity extending into Southeast Asia and select investments in Singapore and Australia.

Monk's Hill Ventures is a Southeast Asia-focused venture capital firm founded in 2014 by Peng T. Ong and Kuo-Yi Lim, both experienced regional tech entrepreneurs and investors. The firm is headquartered in Singapore at 1 George Street, with additional on-the-ground presence in Jakarta, Indonesia and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, reflecting its regional coverage strategy. Monk's Hill states it has invested in more than 50 fast-growing startups across Southeast Asia since founding. The firm's portfolio spans a wide range of business models across the region, including logistics unicorn Ninja Van, edtech platform ELSA, and fintech, healthtech, HR tech, and SaaS companies operating across Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the wider Southeast Asian market. Monk's Hill also runs community initiatives for its portfolio founders, including the SEA Connect and Angsana Council programs.

Orvel Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on identifying high-potential companies in what it describes as the challenging and opaque Southeast Asian market. The firm was co-founded by Milan Reinartz, Mohan Belani, Cheng Wei Ng, and Jeremy Au, and its portfolio and activity are concentrated across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. An exact founding year, headquarters address, and fund size were not disclosed in the firm's own materials reviewed for this profile. Orvel says its portfolio has produced 14 mark-ups and follow-on rounds, and that its backed companies were EBITDA-positive at the time of investment — an unusually explicit profitability claim for an early-stage regional fund. The firm has also disclosed a realized return figure of roughly 0.1x DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) on exits to date, and lists AscendAngels and Farquhar Venture Capital among its backing partners.

Patamar Capital is a U.S.-headquartered impact-oriented investment platform co-founded by Founding Partners Geoff "Chester" Woolley and Lee FitzGerald, tracing its roots to 2004, when its predecessor organization, Unitus Inc., pioneered microfinance investing in India. Over roughly two decades the firm evolved from a single microfinance-focused vehicle into a multi-asset platform spanning six distinct funds — including the Livelihood Impact Fund, Patamar Fund II, the Investing in Women Fund, the SEAF Women's Opportunity Fund, the gender-lens Beacon debt fund, and the Liquidus Fund — combining venture equity, venture debt, and gender-lens investment products. The firm maintains on-the-ground presence across the United States, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia, and states it has backed more than 50 companies, reaching over 15 million underserved individuals across its portfolio's combined reach. Patamar's disclosed portfolio includes the Philippine proptech company Lhoopa and the Philippine-active pharmacy-distribution platform SwipeRx, alongside a broad roster of emerging-markets fintech, agritech, healthtech, and SME-digitization companies such as Ayoconnect, Kinara, MyShubhLife, Taptap Send, and Peddlr — reflecting genuine investment activity across South and Southeast Asia rather than a purely thematic claim.

Plug and Play Philippines is the local National Startup Accelerator Program run under a formal, two-year partnership between Plug and Play, the Silicon Valley-founded global innovation platform active since 2006 and connected to over 35,000 startups and 500-plus corporate partners worldwide, and the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), publicly launched in Makati in April 2024. Rather than an independent Philippine-founded fund, it exists because the government sought out a global accelerator brand to run a formal local program, targeting roughly 40 startups a year across two six-month cohorts, focused on AI, cybersecurity, software development, animation, agritech, and food technology. DFNN Inc., a listed Philippine tech company, joined as a private-sector partner, testing incubating companies' products and contributing seed funding alongside DTI-referred sponsors. Participants receive mentorship and limited direct equity funding, plus access to Plug and Play's global network, reported by the firm at roughly billion in accessible capital — a genuinely different value proposition from a fund writing its own large checks, stated plainly here rather than oversold.

Rebright Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2008 by Takeshi Ebihara, a 30-year venture capital veteran and serial entrepreneur who previously founded internet companies including one that reached a public listing. The firm is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with additional offices in Bengaluru, India and Singapore, and describes itself as "the gateway between Japan, ASEAN and India" — backed by prominent Japanese corporate and institutional investors and leveraging that network to help portfolio startups expand regionally and forge partnerships with major Japanese technology companies. Its investment team includes Partner Brij Bhasin (co-founder of GSF Accelerator, an early advisor at Little Eye Labs, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014) and Principal Mahesh Kumar (formerly of Sony Innovation Fund). The firm has built a portfolio of more than 35 companies across India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, spanning healthcare (MediBuddy, Virohan, Nivaan, Instalimb), e-commerce (Bukalapak, Qraved, Elanic), edtech (Codingal, Stimuler), logistics and mobility (LetsTransport, ClickPost, Numocity — later acquired by ABB e-Mobility), agritech (Aquaconnect, Eggoz), and fintech/insurtech. Its one confirmed Philippine investment is Coins.ph, the cryptocurrency and blockchain-based financial services platform.

A sourcing note before the profile itself: an initial search led to a different, seemingly inactive site (sierramadre.vc, describing a vague "Industrial Evolution" thesis with almost no accessible content) — cross-checking confirmed this is likely an unrelated or dormant project, not the real entity behind this name in the Philippine market. The firm actually matching "Sierra Madre" as an investor here is Sierra Madre Advisers, a Makati-headquartered private equity firm founded in 2015 (per PitchBook) and led by Managing Partners Danny Lizares, Martin Lorenzo, and Alasdair Thomson, who together describe roughly 60 years of combined operating and investment experience. Its office is at 1F First Lucky Place, 2259 Chino Roces Avenue Extension, Makati. Sierra Madre is explicitly Philippines-focused, branding itself "Investing in Philippine Potential," and backs founder-led and family-owned Philippine companies with flexible capital for growth, succession, buyouts, or carve-outs. Its named portfolio spans logistics (Ximex Delivery Express), staffing/technology (TeamQuest Technology), accounting/business services (Frontline Accounting), technology (Shellsoft Technology, Courxera Holdings), agriculture (Excelsior Farms), and hospitality (Mosaic Hospitality Solutions). The firm reports 15+ successful exits and states a 100% founder-retention rate across its portfolio.

Villgro Philippines is a gender-smart impact incubator founded in 2017 and based in Makati, operating as the Philippine chapter of Villgro, an impact-investing organization with roots in India that runs country-specific programs across several emerging markets. Rather than writing occasional checks from a fixed fund, Villgro Philippines runs a direct incubation-and-investment portfolio that has grown to around 39 enterprises across health, education, agriculture, affordable housing, and women-and-girls-focused businesses, pairing capital with hands-on investment-readiness support. It also co-founded two pieces of investing infrastructure the local ecosystem lacked: Impact Pioneers, described by Villgro itself as the Philippines' first dedicated impact angel-investing network, built jointly with xchange; and WE Rise Community, an access-to-finance platform for women entrepreneurs. Its most recent initiative, AI4Health Asia, was launched with Canada's IDRC as the first accelerator of its kind in the region dedicated to responsible-AI health startups, focused on sexual, reproductive, and maternal health and on epidemic preparedness across South and Southeast Asia.