Heaptalk, Jakarta – AppWorks, the venture capital (VC) company headquartered in Taipei, announced it raised US$150 million as its fundraising target in AppWorks Fund III. Previously, at the beginning of March, the VC has confirmed netted US$114 million, and in less than one semester, it has managed to sweep up its new total corpus.
The accomplishment was inseparable from the list of AppWorks’s existing and new limited partners, including Axiom Asia Private Capital, Taiwan Mobile, Fubon Life, TransGlobe Life, Hongtai Group, Wistron, Cathay Life, Phison Electronics, and Taiwan’s National Development Fund. Most of the investor’s list is known also participated in AppWorks second fund in 2014 with a total capital of US$50 million.
AppWorks’ boldness in setting the new target three times higher than the initial fund does not come without a robust ground. In the second funding, the Taiwan-based venture capital entity and accelerator has proven its high portfolio by disbursing investment to Lalamove, Hong kong-based logistics company, and Carousell, an online classified ad platform and 911app, an omnichannel commerce solution provider that creates brand-own shopping app and website for retailers. From its startup trajectory, by the end of July 2021, the total value to paid-in (TVPI), or the return multiple net of fees, attained 3.3 times. The amount is considerable compared to other top global VCs in the same period revealed by Cambridge Associates that only obtained TVPI of 2.4 times.
AppWorks was initially a startup accelerator founded in 2009, yet, over the past 12 years, it has developed to be one of the Top VC firms that has a crucial role in startups’ development across Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Starting its funding in 2012, the Entity today has fostered 414 active startups that have raised US$4.3 billion collectively with an aggregate valuation of US$17.4 billion.
Looking forward, the third fund will be channeled evenly to about 40 startups starting from US$2 million in Series A, B, and C rounds and about US$50,000 to US$200,000 for startups in the seed rounds. The Firm affirmed will put its stakes more on startups in the artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and decentralized finance (DeFi) sectors.
“A lot of our accelerator alumni startups are by first-time founders, so they need help all the way from the 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 US$10, US$15 or US$20 million. It stems from our particular deal flow since we are mainly supporting our alumni founders and mentors, so we have two very different types of deal flows,” stated Lin as cited in Techcrunch (11/08).
In Southeast Asia, AppWorks will keep focus on Indonesian’s startup while endeavor to open its business gate in Vietnam. Based on its record, AppWorks penetrated to Indonesia since 2016 has bolstered startups to grow rapidly, including online furniture retailer Fabellio, edtech startup HarukaEDU, school payments firm InfraDigital, and a cloud-kitchen YummyCorp that last week (03/08) just raised its series B funding from BRI Ventures. (WLN)
