Tech investment firm Sequoia India & Southeast Asia has launched Pathfinders, a platform to help regional early-stage startups expand globally through its network of senior entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, real estate manager ESR has forged a joint venture with STACK Infrastructure to develop a data centre in South Korea.
Sequoia launches expansion programme for startups in India, SE Asia
Sequoia India & Southeast Asia has launched Pathfinders, a platform that connects early-stage founders from India and Southeast Asia with seasoned business leaders who can help them expand into new markets, with a strong focus on the US.
The support will include shaping the startups’ go-to-market strategy, landing the initial set of global customers, making key hires and thinking through company design choices, Sequoia said in a statement.
“This support at the very early stages of company building is invaluable for startups where an early hire or a lighthouse customer can change the trajectory of the company,” the firm said.
The programme also enables an investment opportunity in these tech startups alongside Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia at the same terms and with no commercials to Sequoia.
The venture capital firm’s network of ‘pathfinders’ includes founders and senior executives from Silicon Valley such as Palo Alto Networks’ Amit Singh, Oliver Jay (former chief revenue officer of Asana), UIPath’s Param Kalhon, Rippling co-founder Prasanna Sankar and Sandeep Johri (former CEO of Tricentis), among others.
“Over the past year, we have onboarded 25 Pathfinders to the platform to include exceptional executives from unicorns to large tech companies across domains such as sales, marketing, product management and engineering. Six of our companies have already received investments and mentorship from our Pathfinders,” said Harshjit Sethi, managing director at Sequoia India, adding that the platform will scale up over the next year by onboarding more Pathfinders and portfolio companies.
ESR, STACK Infrastructure set up JV for S Korea data centre
Hong Kong-based real asset manager ESR and digital infrastructure operator STACK Infrastructure have formed a joint venture to develop a 48 MW data centre in Incheon, Korea.
Power to the facility has been secured from KEPCO and construction of the single building will commence in Q1 2023 for delivery of ready for service capacity in Q4 2024, the firms said in a joint statement.
The data centre will be operated under the STACK brand.
STACK has recently announced its entry into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market with the opening of its Singapore regional headquarters, its first 36MW campus in Inzai, Japan, and expansion into the Australia market with 124MW in Melbourne, Canberra and Perth.
The Korea-based data centre will enable hyperscalers and enterprise clients to address their evolving requirements in Korea and the APAC region more broadly, the statement said.
ESR has also acquired data centre land in Japan and Hong Kong. In addition, in July, the firm held a $1-billion first close of the ESR DC Fund 1, ESR’s maiden data centre fund. ESR will raise a separate discretionary capital sleeve to co-invest into the fund, which will likely close the balance of the fund at a hard cap of $1.5 billion.