Former founders of Rakuten's Viki launch venture builder in Singapore; to incubate more than 100 startups

THEVENTURES Singapore (TVSG), an offshoot of Korea venture capital firm TheVenture, has launched its venture building programme in the city-state. It is aiming to incubate more than 100 startups across South-east Asia over the next five years as more young upstarts in the region pop up amid a booming tech ecosystem.

TVSG will be headed by Moon Jiwon and Ho Changseong, founders of US-based video streaming website Viki. The couple founded the online video platform Viki in Moon's Harvard dormitory in 2007 while Ho was studying for his MBA at Stanford. It was later acquired by Rakuten for a reported US$200 million in 2013. After the Viki exit, the couple continued to invest and build startups in Korea, the United States, India, and Vietnam, they said.

Moon and Ho in 2014 then founded early-stage startup incubator and VC firm TheVentures in South Korea, backed by blue-chip investors including South Korea's Internet company Kakao, video game publisher NCSoft and game developer Com2Us. It has invested in more than 100 startups since 2014 and holds a combined portfolio value of more than US$1 billion, according to a statement from the company. Portfolio companies include mobile wedding planning app Wedding Book and company review platform Jobplanet.

They are now looking to launch a similar venture in Singapore with TVSG on the back of an increasing number of investments in South-east Asia. "Over the past year, our portfolio of South-east and South Asian startups has increased to 57 per cent in 2021, up from 21 per cent in 2020," said Ho, the co-founder of TVSG.

So far, the couple have invested in more than 20 South-east Asian startups through TheVentures Korea or in their own capacity, Moon told The Business Times.

The pair hopes to invest in South-east Asia-focused startups in domains including e-commerce, community, fintech, online to offline, biotech, healthcare, foodtech and sustainability. TVSG will start operating with capital from both founders at this stage, Moon noted.

TheVentures Korea will also be relocating multiple projects to Singapore. This will serve as the "base camp" for the firm to commercialise their technology and scale businesses to the global market, TVSG added.

Moon added that the company would "like to make Singapore the base camp again for new projects and their global expansion".

The couple have also set up a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform for startups without an in-house tech team as well as a SaaS-powered startup incubation programme targetted at entrepreneurs in the community, education, and commerce sectors. They are also looking to bring these platforms to the region.