Investors Directory

1982 Ventures is a Singapore-based early-stage venture capital firm co-founded by Managing Partners Scott Krivokopich and Herston Elton Powers, headquartered at 3 Shenton Way in Singapore's Shenton Way business district. The firm's own materials reviewed for this profile did not disclose an exact founding year, but its fund history is documented in regional trade press: its debut Fund I closed at US$20 million, exceeding its original US$15 million target, and the firm was reportedly targeting a US$50 million Fund II by early 2024. Beyond Singapore, the firm maintains regional operating partners covering Japan, Vietnam, and the United States, reflecting a deliberately hands-on, on-the-ground support model for its portfolio founders. 1982 Ventures describes itself as one of the most active fintech-focused seed investors in Southeast Asia, and its disclosed portfolio bears that out — spanning digital payments, embedded finance, buy-now-pay-later, payroll/earned-wage-access, and digital-asset exchange companies across the region. The firm has also shown willingness to follow strong founders into adjacent categories and geographies, including a disclosed participation in a US$400 million round for the US-based AI startup Higgsfield.

500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) is a global venture capital firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with over $2.3 billion in assets under management and investments in 2,900+ companies across 80+ countries. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia since 2012 and has backed more than 340 companies in the region. It runs a dedicated Manila-based vehicle, 500 Philippines Fund (2019 vintage), and Martin Cu, a former Ninja Van Philippines country head, joined as Partner in 2023 to lead Philippine coverage for the firm's flagship Southeast Asia fund. 500 Global's managing partner Vishal Harnal has publicly named the Philippines an "inflection point" market within the firm's regional strategy.

💰 Check size: $100K–$500K

AC Ventures — which brands itself as ACV Capital — traces its roots to 2014, when Adrian Li and Donald Wihardja founded Convergence Ventures, an early-stage fund dedicated to Indonesia's digital disruptors. Convergence's first fund, Convergence Capital I, closed at $30 million in 2016 and backed early companies including Helpster (job-matching), ReWork (co-working), and Laku6 (used-phone recommerce). Convergence Ventures later merged with fellow Indonesian VC Agaeti Venture Capital to form AC Ventures, which has since grown into one of Southeast Asia's more active growth-equity platforms. Today AC Ventures is led by founders and managing partners Michael Soerijadji and Adrian Li, alongside managing partner Helen Wong, headquartered at Prosperity Tower in Jakarta Selatan, Indonesia (with an additional Malaysia office). The firm states it manages over US$500 million across five funds, has invested in more than 100 companies across the region, and describes its portfolio — which includes Xendit, Carsome, Stockbit, Julo, Brik, Kargo, and Bibit — as having created more than $7 billion in combined market capitalization. AC Ventures frames its approach as "founders investing in founders," emphasizing operational support and regional market insight alongside capital.

A naming note up front: effective July 31, 2025, ACA Investments Pte. Ltd. — the Singapore-based entity of the Japanese ACA Group, in strategic alliance with Daiwa Securities Group since 2018 — formally changed its name to Felicity Global Capital Pte. Ltd. This profile is written under the name the firm is generally known by (ACA Investments), with the rename noted honestly rather than silently updated, since most public deal records and press coverage still refer to it as ACA Investments. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Singapore (8 Temasek Boulevard, Suntec Tower 3), the firm describes its mission as "bridging Japan and Southeast Asia," combining Japanese capital and corporate relationships with growth opportunities across Southeast Asian and broader Asia-Pacific markets. ACA Investments has a genuine, confirmed Philippine investment: it participated in Sprout Solutions' (a Philippine HR-tech/payroll SaaS company) US$10.7 million Series B round in 2023, alongside Cercano Management, SoftBank Ventures Asia, AFG Partners, GSR Ventures, and others. Its broader portfolio spans Japan and Southeast Asia across fintech, media, biotech, healthtech, e-commerce, and deep tech, including SmartNews, Gojo & Company (microfinance), H3 Dynamics, FreeD Group, iPrice, InstaPay, bitFlyer, and HealthMetrics — reflecting a growth-stage, sector-agnostic mandate rather than a narrow thesis.

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

Alpha JWC Ventures is a Southeast Asian venture capital firm founded in 2015 and headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, with a secondary office in Singapore. The firm was founded by Jefrey Joe, Chandra Tjan, and Willson Cuaca (the "JWC" in its name draws on the founders' names), and describes its focus as an "Indonesia+" strategy — anchored in Indonesia while investing selectively across the wider Southeast Asian region. Alpha JWC has raised a series of funds since inception, growing from its first fund into progressively larger vehicles as it built a reputation as one of Indonesia's most active early-to-growth-stage investors. The firm positions itself as a hands-on, value-add partner rather than a passive check-writer, running founder-support initiatives such as Alpha-X and an in-house academy alongside its core investing activity. Its portfolio spans several of Indonesia's best-known consumer and technology companies, reflecting a broad mandate across fintech, e-commerce, and consumer-facing digital platforms rather than a narrow sector thesis.

Altara Ventures is a Singapore-based venture capital firm established in 2020, headquartered on Floor 28 of 9 Battery Road in Singapore, and led by a team of general partners including Chairman Koh Boon Hwee alongside Dave Ng, Seow Kiat Wang, Gavin Teo, and Tan Chow Boon. The firm reports roughly US$130 million in assets under management and describes its leadership as operators-turned-investors, with prior experience scaling companies such as Omni, Zynga, and Zuora to IPO, and a collective track record of generating more than US$1 billion in IPO proceeds across earlier ventures before formally launching Altara. Altara maintains an unusually wide on-the-ground presence for a fund of its size, with offices or investment activity spanning Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the United States. Its disclosed portfolio directly includes the Philippine digital bank Tonik, alongside PropertyScout, Staffinc, Buy&Ship, Netbank, PolicyStreet, Kyan, Clevai, Allra, Hyperlounge, and Klinik Pintar — reflecting genuine, confirmed investment activity in the Philippine market, not just regional proximity.

Amasia is a thesis-driven venture capital firm founded in 2013 by Ramanan Raghavendran and John Kim, headquartered in Burlingame, California, investing globally in the US, Southeast Asia, India, Europe, and Latin America. Its Philippine connection is real but concentrated in a small number of deals rather than a dedicated local fund: Coins.ph, a Manila-founded fintech, was Amasia's first-ever investment (since exited), and in 2024 the firm was among the investors in a $6.5 million pre-Series A round for Hive Health, a Manila-based SME health-insurance startup that later acquired one of the Philippines' oldest HMOs.

AppWorks is a Taipei, Taiwan-headquartered venture capital firm and startup accelerator founded in 2009 by Jamie Lin, who continues to lead the firm as Chairman & Partner. What began as the AppWorks Accelerator in 2010 has grown into a four-fund venture platform managing roughly US$350 million, with a self-reported network of 660+ active portfolio startups, thousands of founders, and tens of billions of dollars in cumulative portfolio valuation. AppWorks describes itself as one of the most active early-stage investors in "Greater Southeast Asia," a self-coined term reflecting its dual base spanning Taiwan and the wider Southeast Asian region. Its portfolio includes several of the region's best-known technology successes — Carousell, 91APP, Tiki, Dcard, ShopBack, and Web3 names like Animoca Brands and Dapper Labs among them. Its direct Philippine footprint is thin but real: its own investments page names one Philippine company, Clout Kitchen (an AI-powered creator-economy startup founded by three Filipino repeat founders), which AppWorks led at the pre-seed stage in 2024 — the firm itself notes its portfolio "underrepresents the Philippines relative to other regional markets like Indonesia and Vietnam."

Cento Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage Southeast Asian startups that have already reached initial product-market fit, with a particular concentration on companies building digital financial services — credit, settlements, insurance, and payments infrastructure. The firm is headquartered in Singapore, with additional offices in Seoul, South Korea and Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, and current partners including Dmitry Levit, Ali Fancy, and Yuan Lee Chung. (Note: this session could not independently confirm Cento Ventures' exact founding year through a live, fetchable source — stated honestly rather than guessed; should be confirmed directly before publishing if precision on that fact matters.) The firm's portfolio spans fintech and adjacent digital-economy sectors across the region, including payment processor 2C2P, digital consumer-finance platform Jirnexu, fashion e-commerce company Pomelo, telehealth-adjacent Medical Departures, and trade-financing platform Aqwire, alongside bets in F&B SaaS, logistics, and recruitment technology.

Creador is a growth-stage private equity firm founded in 2011 by Brahmal Vasudevan, who continues to lead the firm as CEO, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Menara BRDB, Bukit Bandar Raya). The firm has raised roughly US$3.1 billion in committed capital across six funds since inception (Creador I through VI, ranging from a US$130 million debut fund in 2011 to a US$930 million sixth fund closed in 2024) and reports having deployed more than US$2 billion into approximately 63 portfolio companies. It maintains a genuine regional office network — Kuala Lumpur (HQ), Singapore, Bangkok, Mumbai, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and a Philippine office in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig (Unit 2306, Philippine Stock Exchange Tower). Creador's confirmed Philippine investment is DALI Everyday Grocery, which the firm describes as "the Philippines' pioneer and leading hard discount retailer," invested in 2022. Its broader portfolio spans consumer and retail (MR.DIY across Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines; Tealive), financial services (Cholamandalam, City Union Bank, BFI Finance), healthcare (Hermina hospital chain in Indonesia), and other regional consumer names (Somany Ceramics, CTOS Digital, Sapphire Foods, Long Chau pharmacy in Vietnam).

💰 Check size: Over $5M

Crestone Venture Capital is a fintech-focused venture fund founded in 2019 by Kai Schmitz and Inanc Balci, with an Asia office in Makati alongside its Washington, D.C. and Sao Paulo offices, a deliberately global structure built around one specific thesis rather than one specific country. Crestone looks for the same underlying pattern across very different emerging markets: large, young, digitally-native populations with fast-growing GDP and urbanization but still-low penetration of formal financial services, and it backs the fintech infrastructure and embedded-finance companies built to close that gap. In the Philippines specifically, its confirmed portfolio includes Peddlr, a digital ledger and point-of-sale app that helps small sari-sari-store-style merchants manage inventory, bookkeeping, and a B2B marketplace in one place, and OneLot, which is building the software, data, and financing layer for the country's roughly $13 billion used-car dealership market. Both are the kind of unglamorous, high-volume, financial-inclusion-adjacent businesses that fit Crestone's stated thesis exactly, rather than headline-grabbing consumer apps.