AppWorks, the Taipei-based enterprise capital agency targeted on Taiwan and Southeast Asia, introduced at the moment it has closed its oversubscribed third fund, elevating $150 million. AppWorks Fund III’s restricted companions embody Taiwan Mobile, Axiom Asia Private Capital, Fubon Life, TransGlobe Life, Hongtai Group, Wistron, Cathay Pacific, Phison Electronics and Taiwan’s National Development Fund. Many of those LPs additionally participated in AppWorks’ $50 million second fund in 2014.
AppWorks’ complete property below administration (AUM) is now $212 million. As a part of Fund III’s shut, AppWorks is recruiting new funding associates and analysts, particularly ones who will give attention to sourcing offers all through Southeast Asia.
Jamie Lin, the agency’s chairman and founding accomplice, informed TechCrunch that Fund III had an preliminary goal of $100 million, however surpassed it due to the sturdy efficiency of AppWorks’ second fund.
Fund II’s portfolio contains Lalamove and 91APP, and on the finish of July 2021, its complete worth to paid-in (TVPI), or the return a number of internet of charges, reached 3.3x. By comparability, the highest quartile of world VC and personal fairness funds launched across the identical time have a TVPI of two.4x, in accordance with knowledge from Cambridge Associates. Fund II additionally achieved inside fee of return (IRR) of 34.7%, in comparison with 26.1% for the opposite funds.
Founded in 2009, AppWorks began its accelerator program earlier than launching a $11 million debut fund in 2012. AppWorks’ ecosystem now contains 414 energetic startups which have collectively raised $4.Three billion, and have an mixture valuation of $17.Four billion. Over the following 10 years, AppWorks’ aim is to extend that to 1,000 energetic startups with a collective worth of greater than $100 billion.
Lin stated AppWorks has a robust incoming pipeline as a result of many startups in its ecosystem, together with ones run by accelerator alumni and its mentor community of about 100 seasoned entrepreneurs, have reached product-market match, are scalable and want to boost funding to speed up progress.
Fund III is earmarked for a portfolio of about 40 startups, cut up evenly between investments beginning at $2 million in Series A to Series C rounds, and seed-stage investments. Seed-stage checks can vary in dimension from about $50,000 to $200,000, relying on a startup’s wants. Part of the fund’s capital may also go towards AppWorks’ present portfolio corporations as they attain maturation.
AppWorks’ three essential funding themes are Southeast Asia, blockchain and synthetic intelligence.
Lin stated that a lot of AppWorks accelerator graduates over the previous three to 5 years are from Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and, more and more, Indonesia and the Philippines. (AppWorks additionally serves as an LP in about 15 seed funds throughout Southeast Asia, which helped it preserve sturdy deal stream regardless of pandemic journey restrictions).
AppWorks’ present blockchain investments embody Dapper Labs, Animoca Brands and Splinterlands. Lin is very eager on NFTs and their “ability to breach the physical world and digital world,” plus blockchain’s potential to vary how individuals sport (for instance, the play-to-earn mannequin Splinterlands is thought for).
Investing in a mixture of seed- and growth-stage offers means Fund III’s schedule will probably be extra evenly unfold out. The strategy is “better for LPs, but also mostly comes from our philosophy of putting founders front and center,” Lin stated. “A lot of our accelerator alumni startups are by first-time founders, so they need help all the way from seed stage. Many of our mentors have already raised seed or Series A rounds, and they come to us when they need someone to lead a Series B of $10, $15 or $20 million. It stems from our particular deal flow, since we’re mainly supporting our alumni founders and mentors, so we have two very different types of deal flows.”
Fund III has already backed AppWorks accelerator alumni like Pickone, WeMo Scooter, Omnichat, XREX, Blocto, SoopahGenius and Docosan….
