Investors Directory

JG Digital Equity Ventures (JGDEV) is the corporate venture capital arm of JG Summit Holdings, one of the Philippines' largest diversified conglomerates, spanning food, real estate, air transportation, banking, and petrochemicals. It was launched in 2019 to formalize the group's approach to digital and startup investment. Its confirmed portfolio spans Series A/B-stage Philippine and regional technology companies, including sari-sari store enabler GrowSari, consumer lending platform Cashalo, receipt-scanning rewards platform Snapcart, and Philippine digital bank GoTyme Bank (via a stake in parent Tyme Group). It has also backed India-based HR technology platform Darwinbox, reflecting a mandate broader than the Philippines alone.

Kaya Founders is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Makati, Metro Manila, founded in 2021 by operators-turned-investors Paulo Campos (former CEO, Zalora Philippines), Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng (CEO, Summit Media), and Ray Alimurung (former CEO, Lazada Philippines). The firm runs a stapled dual-fund structure -- a "Zero to One" pre-seed fund and a "One to Ten" seed-to-Series A fund -- and closed its second fund at US$25 million (about P1.47 billion) in November 2025. It has built a portfolio of 40+ startups since founding.

💰 Check size: $100K–$500K

Kickstart Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Globe Telecom, founded in 2012 and headquartered in Makati. It is the Philippines' largest corporate VC by track record, having participated in dozens of funding rounds across multiple countries and built a portfolio of roughly 70 local and international companies. Kickstart also advises the Ayala Corporation Technology Innovation Venture (ACTIVE) Fund. Its core differentiator is direct access to the Globe and Ayala corporate ecosystems — retail networks, logistics infrastructure, and telecom distribution — that it can plug portfolio startups into directly, rather than acting purely as a capital provider.

Manila Angel Investors Network (MAIN) was founded in 2016 and is registered with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission as a non-stock, non-profit organization. It is the largest committed private investor network in the Philippines, connecting individual angel investors with promising early-stage Filipino companies. Beyond capital, MAIN provides mentorship, expertise support, and networking opportunities to the founders it backs. It invests at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages, and has backed early-stage companies including Kumu, Booky, and TANGGapp.

Navegar is a Philippine-focused private equity firm founded in 2011 and headquartered in Makati, formed in partnership with Swedish investment group Brummer & Partners. Unlike most entries here, Navegar does not write early-stage checks — it provides growth capital to already-profitable, mid-sized Philippine companies that need capital and an active ownership partner to scale further. Its best-known deal is a million strategic investment into TaskUs in 2015, when the outsourcing company was already profitable on a roughly million revenue run rate — Navegar's capital and board involvement helped fund TaskUs's growth before it went public on Nasdaq. Its broader portfolio spans outsourcing, food and beverage, healthcare, logistics, and e-commerce, and includes Great Deals E-Commerce Corp., itself already profiled in this directory. Now managing roughly million across two funds, with backers including Sweden's Swedfund and the IFC, Navegar has raised a third fund targeting ( million to keep backing mid-sized Philippine businesses through what its own managing partners have publicly called the country's uneven post-pandemic recovery.

💰 Check size: Over $5M

Openspace Ventures (now operating under the broader Openspace Capital name) is a multi-strategy asset manager founded in 2014 and focused on Southeast Asia. It is co-headquartered in Singapore and Jakarta, with additional offices across the region including a presence in Manila, and manages roughly $800 million in total committed capital across six funds spanning early-stage, growth-stage (OSV+), and a crypto-focused fund (Ocular). In the Philippines, Openspace is best known for co-leading Kumu's approximately $15 million Series B round in mid-2021 alongside SIG, joined by returning investors Kickstart Ventures, Foxmont Capital Partners, and Summit Media. Its broader Southeast Asian portfolio includes Gojek/GoTo, Kredivo, Halodoc, and Pickup Coffee.

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.

QBO Innovation Hub is the Philippines' first public-private partnership platform for Filipino startups, established in 2016 through a joint effort by IdeaSpace, J.P. Morgan, and two Philippine government agencies, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Rather than investing directly as a fund, QBO functions as a connective hub: it links entrepreneurs to capital sources, mentors, and structured growth programs, and has supported more than 700 Philippine startups since its founding. It also runs recurring ecosystem-wide initiatives such as the annual Philippine Startup Week, which showcases a Top 100 startups cohort (its 2023 edition was publicly recognized).

The Startup Venture Fund is a direct government investment vehicle created under the Philippines' Innovative Startup Act (Republic Act 11337), administered by the National Development Company (NDC), an agency under the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Capitalized at ₱250 million and launched in November 2021, it makes direct co-investments into qualifying Filipino startups alongside accredited private-sector co-investment partners — a distinct role from partners such as IdeaSpace or Gobi-Core Philippine Fund (both separately listed in this directory), which are private co-investment partners of the fund rather than the government fund itself. A confirmed direct investment example is a ₱11 million commitment into SolX Technologies, a Philippine solar-energy startup, made in June 2024.

UBX Philippines Corp is the fintech venture-building and investment arm of UnionBank of the Philippines (part of the Aboitiz Group), incorporated in late 2018 with a reported committed budget of roughly ₱500 million a year. It builds and invests in financial-technology ventures aimed at underserved Filipino individuals and small businesses, and later established a Singapore hub to extend its venture arm's regional reach. Confirmed portfolio includes SME lending platform SeekCap, rural-bank digital-infrastructure provider i2i, and micro-merchant platform Bux. UBX also led a funding round for PDAX, one of the Philippines' licensed cryptocurrency exchanges — a real, notable link to another platform already tracked in this directory's Startups section.

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.

Wavemaker Partners is a venture capital firm founded in 2012 by Paul Santos (Singapore) and Eric Manlunas (Los Angeles), grown out of the Draper Venture Network into a bi-coastal firm spanning Southeast Asia and Southern California. Its Asian fund focuses on enterprise, deep tech, and sustainability, with the Philippines as one of its core Southeast Asian markets alongside Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Since 2012, Wavemaker has backed more than 200 companies region-wide, with over $500 million in total committed capital and exits generating over $2 billion in enterprise value. It operates three fund strategies — Wavemaker Ventures (early-stage), Wavemaker Impact (venture building for climate/decarbonization), and Wavemaker Growth (growth-stage).