Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India to focus on maintaining discipline on valuations, working closely with founders in 2025

*This article is adapted from * TNGlobal

As the year of 2024 comes to an end, we sought insights from prominent figures across the Southeast Asian tech landscape. These leaders reflected on their triumphs throughout the year, sharing valuable perspectives on their achievements and the challenges they overcame. Furthermore, they unveiled their ambitious aspirations, meticulously outlined their strategic plans for 2025, and offered insightful predictions on the trajectory of the tech industry in the coming year.

We talked to Chua Joo Hock, Managing Partner at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, to learn more about the Singapore-headquartered venture capital firm’s achievements in 2024, its plans and priorities in 2025. He also shared his views on the outlook of the tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia for the new year.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India said it partners with founders who are creating innovative, transformative and scalable businesses. It has a long and strong track record of investing in early-stage startups and building champions like Grab, PatSnap, Nium, FirstCry, XPressBees, Licious, 17LIVE, and others, information from its Linkedin page showed.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India supports its portfolio companies with unmatched operating experience and deep access to the capital, talent, partners and customers they need to build truly global businesses.  Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India is one of seven major funds in the Vertex Global Network which includes Vertex Ventures Israel, Vertex Ventures China, Vertex Ventures US, Vertex Ventures Japan, Vertex Ventures HC and Vertex Growth.

1. How was Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India’s 2024?

In 2024, we made 11 new investments while actively supporting and working closely with our portfolio. While the funding situation was challenging in 2024, we managed to help 14 of our portfolio companies raise additional funding, with notable achievements including NIUM’s Series E round and Metub’s Series B financing. These follow-on rounds demonstrate both the strength of our portfolio companies and investors’ continued confidence in their businesses and growth potential.

2. What are your predictions or aspirations for 2025?

I’m seeing some encouraging signs of optimism in the market, but much depends on the revival of the IPO and public market especially in the US. From my experience, when the stock market performs well, we typically see positive effects rippling through to private companies – though this usually takes about six months to materialize.

3. What are Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India’s plans in 2025? What is the focus in the new year?

Our strategy remains consistent – we are not a prolific investor, we won’t rush our investments or compromise on our thorough due diligence process. I believe in maintaining discipline on valuations and absolutely working closely with our founders and their team. My conviction remains strong that consumer spending will continue to be the key driver of GDP growth in our part of the world, which will remain a key sector for us in 2025.

4. How is the outlook for 2025 for the tech startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia?

When I look across the region, I see different stages of ecosystem maturity. India and Singapore are more developed, while other Southeast Asian markets are on their own growth trajectories. In our investment approach, we carefully evaluate companies while considering the unique advantages each local ecosystem offers but with the longer-term vision of going regional or global.

A number of our portfolio companies have gone through this trajectory path and become regional or global champions like Grab, NIUM, PatSnap. This diversity in market maturity and our belief in having local teams in each country (vs “tourist” investors) actually presents interesting opportunities and advantages for us.

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