Indonesia-focused venture capital firm AC Ventures has closed $210 million for its Fund V and other co-investment vehicles from the IFC, as well as institutional investors from the US, Middle East and North Asia.
DealStreetAsia first reported about the fund’s final close earlier this month.
AC Ventures’s fund close took place amid tepid fundraising conditions for venture capital, which saw sharp market corrections as investors diverted their capital to safer and lower-risk asset classes like credit and private equity.
The Indonesian fund was previously reported to be seeking a fund size of $250 million for ACV Fund V before trimming it to $200 million. AC Ventures’s managing partner Adrian Li acknowledged the challenging fundraising environment in 2023, noting that the team took a full year to close the fund.
Despite this, the Indonesian venture firm still managed to secure a healthy re-up rate from existing limited partners (LPs), which contributed over 50% of the fund corpus. Around 90% of AC Ventures’s backers are institutions.
“We have a strong re-up of existing investors into the new fund. I think that’s premised on the strength of our team, the track record that we’ve delivered thus far, which led a couple of new larger investors to join this fund as well,” said Li in a video call with DealStreetAsia.
AC Ventures’s Li continued to emphasise Indonesia’s market potential even though the Southeast Asian market still lags behind matured ecosystems in terms of exits and depth of talent pool. Several aspects such as the need for more liquidity in IPO and capital markets will require time to grow and mature.
“What we’re experiencing right now is the very first time we (Southeast Asia fund managers) are in a proper market correction…But time and again, it’s been shown that the down cycles are the best time to deploy and they often correspond with the best vintages of venture. It’s the time when the best companies are built because capital is not valued as highly or used as efficiently as it is right now,” said Li.
But until Southeast Asia reaches that point of maturity, investors will require cash exits whether in the form of M&As, IPOs, or secondary sales to return capital to LPs and further validate this ecosystem on a global level. In the near term, Li believes that exits will mainly pick up in the form of regional M&As, especially towards 2025.
AC Ventures added that the firm has previously been offered to explore strip sales from its two older funds, and will continue to keep that option open to return DPI to its investors.
“Those are things we’ve had discussions around but it’s not something that we’ve concluded yet,” said Li, who last led Convergence Ventures before its 2020 merger with Agaeti Ventures to form AC Ventures.
“Both of those funds still have a little bit of time, and we don’t have to take deep discounts to gain liquidity. We can continue to hold (them),” he added. Agaeti Ventures closed a $10 million fund in 2018, while Convergence Ventures closed a $30 million fund in 2016.
For now, the focus for AC Ventures is to continue deploying judiciously in early-stage startups.
The valuations and competition for deals have cooled to a healthy pace compared to the peak period of 2020-21, allowing AC Ventures’s team to focus on supporting its portfolio, which covers over 120 companies. AC Ventures, which has $500 million in assets under management, recently added electric vehicle manufacturer MAKA Motors and sustainable farming startup Koltiva to its portfolio.
Li highlighted homegrown companies like IndoFood’s Indomie and Bank Central Asia (BCA) as notable successes with regional and global reach, suggesting that Indonesia has the potential to replicate such successes again.
“Can we re-imagine some of these businesses, which are being built in a shorter time by ambitious entrepreneurs who are funded by great investors? And are incorporating technologies to make their solutions better, cheaper, and more scalable than their traditional counterparts? I think that is something that we’ll see more and more of in the next decade,” shared Li.
Founded in 2012, ACV is led by partners Adrian Li, Michael Soerijadji, Helen Wong, and Pandu Sjahrir who oversee a team of over 40 professionals in Jakarta and Singapore.