Altara Ventures’s General Partners
A group of tech and investment veterans, including Koh Boon Hwee, Tan Chow Boon and Seow Kiat Wang, have joined hands to launch Altara Ventures, an early-stage VC fund targeted at the Southeast Asian markets.
Other General Partners of the fund are Gavin Teo and Dave Ng.
“We are targeting a US$100M+ fund and are in the process of fundraising,” General Partner Ng told e27. “We look to invest US$3-5 million on an average in pre-Series A, Series A and selectively some Series B companies. We prefer to lead and are also open to collaborating with other funds as co-investors.”
Headquartered in Singapore, Altara aims to invest in the fintech, consumer, enterprise software, logistics, healthcare and edutech verticals.
The firm plans to support a total of 20-25 companies operating primarily in the Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines markets.
It has already made three investments — Tonik Financial, a digital bank providing consumer banking services in the Philippines; Stashfin, a mobile-first digital fintech providing consumer credit in India; and Senseye, a deep-tech, AI and data science company that provides insights into user cognitive states.
“We want to back passionate founders and entrepreneurs who have strong product and platform innovation, applying technology to solve a large market problem. This is on top of our typical engagement and diligence process for investments selection,” Ng added.
Altara’s Limited Partners comprise a leading financial services institution, a publicly-listed technology corporation and a prominent family office.
The VC firm’s name derives from the English word Altitude and the Bahasa word Nusantara, which is the historical designation for maritime Southeast Asia.
Each of Altara’s five partners brings extensive experience founding, operating and investing in technology startups in Southeast Asia and globally.
Boon Hwee, Chow Boon and Wang are prominent business leaders and serial entrepreneurs in the Singapore ecosystem, with an angel track record of investing in over 100 companies such as Alteon Networks, FreeCharge, Razer, StashAway and many others.
They previously held the roles of senior executives at HP before founding a leading technology company, Omni Industries, which successfully launched an IPO and subsequently exited to Celestica for S$1.6 billion (US$1.2 billion).
The trio also have years of managing private equity investments as Credence Partners.
Teo and Ng are veteran VC investors bringing decades of experience managing venture funds and operating startups in the US and Southeast Asia. Previously, the duo led investments at B Capital Group, where Teo founded the San Francisco office and Ng was a founding director of the Singapore entity, helping to launch its Asian presence.
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Together, the two invested in several growth-stage companies such as Atomwise, AImotive, Carro, Icertis, Ninja Van in Asia and the US.
Prior to B Capital, Teo invested with Comcast Ventures and managed product at Zynga through the company’s IPO on NASDAQ. Ng was most recently the Head of Southeast Asia for Eight Roads Ventures, a US$6 billion global VC fund backed by Fidelity.
Early this year, three of Altara’s General Partners — Hwee, Boon and Wang — had launched a US$100-million fund Credence Partners.
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Image Credit: Altara Ventures
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