Venture capital firm Cocoon Capital eyes enterprise-tech startups with US$20m fund

SINGAPORE-BASED venture capital (VC) firm Cocoon Capital launched a new US$20 million fund targeting enterprise-tech startups in South-east Asia that are within the deep tech, fintech and medtech verticals.

This follows the early-stage VC firm's first US$7 million fund launched in 2016.

Will Klippgen, co-founder and managing partner at Cocoon Capital, said: "With the billions of dollars available in venture capital in the region, only a fraction is targeting seed-stage companies and Cocoon Capital seeks to help fill this gap."

He added that the funding gap is even more prevalent outside Singapore, which is why the firm is expanding its presence into neighbouring countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, all of which have "tremendous potential".

Cocoon Capital's investors include Singapore-based hedge fund manager Steve Diggle's Vulpes Innovative Technologies Investment Company; Martin Hauge, partner in Creandum - streaming giant Spotify's first financial investor; UK-based seed fund Playfair Capital; Jani Rautiainen, co-founder of PropertyGuru; Martin Roll, global strategy consultant and bestselling author; Oliver Tonby, chairman of McKinsey's offices in Asia, excluding Greater China; and Michelle Yong, director of Singapore's Aurum Investments.

Cocoon Capital's partners plan to take a more active role in early-stage companies to unlock potential. By limiting the number of investments done per year, the partners have more time to give this support, said the firm.

In addition, Cocoon Capital said that it provides a suite of support services to help fast-track young companies and has a more hands-on approach which makes it different from the typical working style by traditional VCs.

Its first fund has a portfolio of 10 startups across Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines, including SensorFlow - a cleantech startup reducing energy consumption in commercial buildings, and See-Mode Technologies - a medtech startup predicting the change of recurrent strokes.

Cocoon Capital's portfolio also includes Hapz.com, Poundit.com, Dexecure and Hiip.asia with more investments in the pipeline to be announced.