Singapore-based seed investor Cocoon Capital has announced the final close of its second fund at $22 million, exceeding an initial target of $20 million.
The second fund will target the enterprise tech market, especially startups within medtech, fintech, insurtech and general deep tech. It will focus on seed rounds across 25 to 30 investments, and will adopt a wider market target to include emerging markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Myanmar.
“For this second fund, we’re doing an investment period of five years, with the overall fund tenure being 10 years, which is a more traditional way of raising a fund and that is why it’s bigger this time,” Michael Blakey, Cocoon Capital co-founder, earlier told DealStreetAsia.
Cocoon Capital said its latest fund was backed by Vulpes Innovative Technologies Investment Company; Martin Hauge, partner at Creandum; UK-based seed fund Playfair Capital; Jani Rautiainen, co-founder of PropertyGuru; Martin Roll, global strategy consultant; bestselling author Parag Khanna; Oliver Tonby, Chairman of McKinsey’s offices in Asia, excluding Greater China; and Michelle Yong, director of Singapore’s Aurum Investments.
With the successful close of the second fund, the firm also announced its initiative of hosting public mentoring hours regularly across Singapore, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and Yangon to help grow the local entrepreneurial ecosystems.
The support will be provided in partnership with local accelerators and co-working spaces, the firm said.
“There is a continuing gap in the region when it comes to hands-on mentoring, in particular at the early stages of a company’s formation, and Cocoon Capital has fine-tuned its operation to provide a tailored and comprehensive support package to our founders,” said Will Klippgen, Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital.
Cocoon Capital was founded in 2016 by Klippgen and Blakey. The duo has done more than 60 seed tech investments since 2000 and seen over 15 exits across Europe and Asia.
Blakey said Cocoon Capital has seen a “radical improvement” in deal quality over the last three years, in particular from the Southeast Asian countries outside Singapore.
“The region has gigantic challenges that need to be solved by technology, and we believe we can help founders build and scale their companies faster,” he said.
