Facebook bought Instagram for $1Bn.
Felix Baumgartner jumped from space.
And Gangnam Style became a ‘thing’.
This was 2012.
The tech revolution in Southeast Asia was beginning to gain momentum. A new generation of exciting founders was emerging.
And Jungle Ventures was born. 10 years ago this year. The beginning of an amazing journey towards the milestone we can proudly announce today.
We started with only $10Mn in our first fund but with a clear purpose: to help the next generation of entrepreneurs from India and Southeast Asia build category-leading companies that stand the test of time.
Today we are proud to say that $10Mn is now $1Bn of Assets Under Management (AUM) making us the first independent, Singapore-headquartered VC firm that invests across Southeast Asia and India, to reach this milestone.
Our growth has been hard-fought. We have built Jungle from the ground up with an ambition to stand apart & to stand for something. To never compromise on our founder first mentality. To push back against the damaging ‘growth at any cost’ mindset. We continue to be principled on our ‘Build to Last’ philosophy, which is meant to ensure founders & their businesses don’t burn out, but instead shine & thrive, no matter the conditions.
Our efforts over the last 10 years have now created a league of companies that are built on these principles of defensible growth. As a result, $250Mn of our invested capital has created over $12Bn of enterprise value with a loss ratio of less than 5%. What’s been even more exciting is that every quarter in the last 12 months, we have announced a unicorn from our portfolio.
We have always dedicated ourselves to the personal development of our founders and helping them to grow into successful CEOs. This means focusing on significantly fewer investments than our peers, having a single fund for all our investments irrespective of the stage of entry, striving for no conflicting investments in any sector, and always exiting with the founder. This has given us the opportunity to partner with some of the most inspiring founders, a purposefully small but growing tribe that includes some of the most celebrated names in the region including the founders of Kredivo, Livspace, and Moglix, all three of which were seed to unicorn investments by Jungle.
Since then, Jungle has curated a regional portfolio of market-leading companies across multiple categories including, vertical e-commerce (Pomelo Fashion, Sociolla, Reddoorz), social commerce (Citymall, Evermos), fintech/insurTech (LeapFinance, Vayana, Turtlemint), B2B enablement (Kiotviet, Deskera, Waresix), electric vehicles (Datbike), SaaS (Builder.ai, BetterPlace), and brand aggregators/D2C brands (Believe, Hypefast).
Jungle was the first independent Singapore-headquartered VC to invest across both Southeast Asia and India. Since inception, Jungle has helped scale and regionalize these businesses to become category leaders across the largest and fastest-growing consumer markets in the world.
To serve founders from such a diverse and fragmented geography requires one to be a local-global firm. From inception to today, we have grown from a team of 2 to 30 and we continue to add some of the most experienced and local investor-operator teams in each country we operate- Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
As part of a growing leadership team, Yash Sankrityayan, formerly part of IFC's formative venture investments team for Southeast Asia, has been promoted to Managing Partner. At Jungle, Yash will continue to apply his Southeast Asia expertise as the lead for our investments in the region. Sandeep Uberoi, who joined us from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he led TMT investment banking for Southeast Asia, has been promoted to Managing Partner to lead strategic development and fundraising efforts for the firm and our portfolio companies across both markets. Manpreet Ratia who earlier joined us as Managing Partner from Flipkart, where he led strategic development as part of the CEO’s Office, continues to lead our portfolio development efforts, especially in India. A huge shout out to Jenny Law, the first Junglee who is celebrating over 10 years with us. She is the foundation on which we all stand tall.
The target for our most recent round was an ambitious $350Mn. The total amount raised at close was a phenomenal $600Mn with $450Mn in the main fund and $150Mn in additional managed commitments, pushing us to over $1Bn in AUM. This represents the enormous trust placed in us by our wonderfully diverse investor base.
Those who have put their faith in our vision and performance include our returning investors, Temasek, IFC, FMO, and DEG to name a few, and a force of selective new global investors such as Mizuho Bank, Ltd., and StepStone Group who will help us multiply our efforts for advancing the ambitions of our amazing founders. We also continue to add the founders and current & former CEOs as well as senior executives of some of the largest global and regional companies such as Goto Group, Grab Financial Group, Flipkart, Sharechat, Facebook, Airbnb, Salesforce, Wattpad, Priceline, Reliance Group, DBS Bank, Citibank, Goldman Sachs amongst others to be part of the Jungle family, creating an amazing network of insights and resources that we and our founders can continue to lean on.
What’s more exciting than a Billion? A TRILLION. The next ten years promise so much. The tech ecosystem in the region is estimated to reach a value of $1Tn by 2030. The founders who drive this growth will be imagining, inventing, and innovating in ways we cannot possibly predict. All we know is that we will continue to be inspired. The region’s founders are uniquely driven to take risks, push boundaries & rewire the world in favour of something better for as many people as possible.
We can’t wait to go on this journey with them. And in turn, help them build some of the largest companies to have ever been created from India and Southeast Asia.
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Disclaimer: Nothing presented within this article is intended to constitute investment advice or recommendation, and under no circumstances should any information provided herein be used or considered as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund managed by Jungle Ventures. Any investment decisions shall exclusively vest based on his/her/its independent discretion and Jungle Ventures will not be liable for any consequences thereof. Information provided reflects Jungle Ventures’s views as of a time, whereby such views are subject to change at any point and Jungle Ventures shall not be obligated to provide notice of any change. Companies mentioned in this article are a representative sample of portfolio companies in which Jungle Ventures has invested, which do not reflect all investments made by Jungle Ventures. No assumptions should be made that investments listed above were or will be profitable. Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events, results or the actual experience may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in these statements. Nothing contained in this article may be relied upon as a guarantee or assurance as to the future success of any particular company. Past performance is not indicative of future results.