Investors Directory

917Ventures (legal entity: Globe Capital Venture Holdings, Inc.) is Globe Telecom's venture-building arm, launched in 2019 and wholly owned by Globe. Rather than investing in external startups the way a typical fund does, it operates primarily as a venture studio — conceiving, building, and launching new digital businesses from within the Globe ecosystem — and has launched roughly 20 ventures to date. Confirmed ventures include GInsure, a digital micro-insurance platform; GCredit, a digital credit line embedded in the GCash app; and AdSpark, a digital advertising and marketing technology company. This venture-builder model is a meaningfully different mechanism from a typical external-investment fund, and is described honestly here as such.

Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc. (AEV) is the publicly listed holding company of the Aboitiz Group, one of the Philippines' oldest and largest conglomerates. It was established in 1989 (originally as Cebu Pan Asian Holdings, renamed AEV in 1993) and has traded on the Philippine Stock Exchange under ticker AEV since 1994. AEV is headquartered in Makati City (Ayala Triangle Gardens Tower 2) and, per its 2024 disclosures, reported ₱302.82 billion in revenue, ₱18.13 billion in net income, and ₱893.70 billion in total assets. Its core businesses span power generation and distribution, banking and financial services, food and agribusiness, infrastructure, real estate, and — since a 2022 strategic repositioning as a self-described "techglomerate" — a growing data and AI arm, Aboitiz Data Innovation. IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP NOTE, PER SITE OWNER'S REQUEST: Aboitiz Equity Ventures is the PARENT conglomerate sitting one level above UBX Philippines Corp, which is already a separate, distinct entry in this directory. The actual ownership chain runs AEV -> Union Bank of the Philippines (a major banking subsidiary of AEV) -> UBX Philippines Corp, UnionBank's dedicated fintech venture-building arm. AEV itself is not a dedicated venture capital fund — it is a diversified public holding company that, through subsidiaries like UnionBank/UBX and its own Aboitiz Data Innovation unit, participates in fintech and tech-venture activity rather than running a standalone VC fund of its own.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mynavi Corporation is a large Japanese information-services conglomerate founded on August 15, 1973 as Mainichi Communications Inc., adopting the Mynavi name in 2011. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo (Palaceside Building), the same building as Mainichi Newspapers, with which it was historically affiliated — though Mynavi's own shareholding tie to Mainichi has since dropped below 10%, and Mainichi now describes it only as a "friendly company" rather than a subsidiary. As of October 2024 Mynavi had roughly 7,621 employees. Its core businesses span employment/recruitment media (new-graduate hiring, career changes, temporary staffing), publishing, real estate information, bridal services, and travel content, operated across numerous Mynavi-branded portal sites, with overseas operations in the United States (New York), China (Beijing), and South Korea (Seoul). Beyond its core media/recruitment business, Mynavi has made direct startup investments, most notably a multi-round investment (starting January 2019, with further rounds through 2024) in Nosh, a Japanese frozen prepared-meal delivery service. No Philippines- or Southeast Asia-specific investment activity was confirmed from available sources for this profile.

SIG Venture Capital is the direct-investment venture arm of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a privately-held quantitative trading and financial services firm founded in May 1987 by Jeff Yass, Arthur Dantchik, and a group of co-founders, headquartered in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. SIG is one of the world's largest privately-held financial services firms, with over $868 billion in total assets and 2024 revenue of $7.2 billion, built primarily on market-making, institutional brokerage, and proprietary trading in equities, fixed income, and derivatives. Its venture arm — often branded SIG Asia VC given its long regional history — has been actively investing in startups for more than 15 years, expanding into China in 2005 and Japan in 2014, and operates from SIG's global office network spanning the US, Europe (Dublin, London), and Asia (Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo). A distinguishing feature of SIG Venture Capital is that it invests its own permanent capital rather than raising and deploying a traditional fund with a fixed lifecycle — this lets it commit to portfolio companies over long, flexible time horizons across deal types and stages from Series A through pre-IPO. The team of 20+ investment and operations professionals has backed more than 50 companies with a combined reported revenue exceeding $2.5 billion and combined EBITDA over $350 million. Its best-known investment is ByteDance, where SIG made an initial $5 million bet in 2012 that had grown to a stake worth more than $15 billion by 2020; other confirmed investments include enterprise fintech company HighRadius, Indian grocery startup Otipy (which SIG led a $10.2 million Series A for), Chinese game-development platform MetaApp (SIG led a $100 million round), and Indonesian dental-care platform Satu Dental (a since-exited position).

💰 Check size: Over $5M

SPH Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), the Singaporean media and property conglomerate whose media business was restructured into the not-for-profit SPH Media Trust in 2021. Per its own investment activity, the firm has backed more than 40 companies to date, primarily across Southeast Asia, investing alongside other regional funds such as Quest Ventures. (Note: this session could not independently confirm SPH Ventures' exact founding year, current fund size, or its precise organizational status following SPH's 2021 media-business restructuring through any live, fetchable source — SPH's own corporate site and SPH Media's site could not be accessed by this session's tools, and no dedicated Wikipedia article exists for the venture arm. Stated honestly rather than guessed; should be confirmed directly before publishing.) Documented investments include Partipost (an influencer-marketing platform, which SPH Ventures led a $3.5 million round for), influence.co (a US-based influencer-marketing seed round), TheLorry (a Malaysia/Southeast Asia logistics platform, participating in a $5.85 million Series B), Pathmatics (co-led investment round), and Snapcart (a shopper-engagement and receipt-scanning app) — reflecting a thesis spanning digital media, influencer/ad-tech, logistics, and consumer engagement technology, sectors adjacent to SPH's own core media and publishing business.

TENCO Capital describes itself as a corporate venture capital firm backing startups in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, headquartered at the TPI-Motortrade Building on EDSA in Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila. The firm's own materials reviewed for this profile did not disclose a founding year, named founders or managing partners, or fund size — though its office address suggests a connection to the Motortrade group of companies, a well-known Philippine motorcycle and vehicle retail conglomerate, without the exact corporate relationship being explicitly confirmed on the firm's site. TENCO positions itself as sector-agnostic, prioritizing founder alignment and execution capability over any single vertical. Its publicly listed portfolio spans consumer, edtech, media, and fintech ventures operating primarily in the Philippines.

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.