Investors Directory

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

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.

Gentree Fund is the venture capital vehicle of the Sy family, the family behind the SM Group of Companies, operating under the Sy Family Office and led by third-generation family members. It began with roughly $40 million initially allocated and, per Nikkei Asia reporting, has been raising a larger vehicle in the $120-150 million range. Confirmed portfolio includes online baby and maternity marketplace edamama, Y Combinator-backed payments company NextPay, enterprise software firm Mosaic Solutions, supply-chain fintech AQWire, livestreaming platform Kumu (a startup already tracked in this site's own Startups directory), and India-based mobile esports platform Mobile Premier League.

ICCP SBI Venture Partners is a joint venture between ICCP Venture Partners — the Philippines' longest continuously operating venture capital firm, tracing back to 1998 — and SBI Holdings, a major Japanese financial services group. Based in Makati, the firm had made 31 investments as of November 2023, combining ICCP's decades of local market experience with SBI's regional capital and network. Confirmed portfolio includes Philippine sari-sari store platform GrowSari, Singapore-based AI recruitment platform X0PA AI, and Singapore-based proptech marketplace Propseller — reflecting a mandate that reaches beyond the Philippines into wider Southeast Asian technology deals.

Insignia Ventures Partners is a Southeast Asian early-to-growth-stage venture capital firm founded in 2017 by Yinglan Tan, a former Sequoia Capital partner, headquartered in Singapore. The firm has raised over $800 million in assets under management across multiple funds, including a $516 million close in 2022, and has made roughly 160+ investments in about 89 companies. The firm is particularly active in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Its confirmed Philippine investments include Tonik, Southeast Asia's first all-digital "neobank," licensed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and First Circle, an SME trade-financing platform, where Insignia participated in an $8.6 million Series B round in 2024 alongside IFC and Endeavor.

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.

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.

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.

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).