Palm Drive Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm, is raising up to $150 million for its third US-Asia focused fund.
According to a source close to the development, Palm Drive has begun reaching out to potential investors to back the fund, and has received positive responses from previous limited partners (LPs) to re-invest.
Its LPs are a mix of US and Asian investors comprising family offices, and founders across technology and traditional sectors. The VC has made about 70 investments across five continents so far. Palm Drive has about 6-9 unicorns in its portfolio, of which at least five it entered in the early stages.
Most of these unicorns are from the US. These include Walmart-acquired e-commerce site, Jet.com; SoftBank-backed Colombian delivery app, Rappi; and Alphabet-backed health insurance company, Clover Health.
The Asian unicorns Palm Drive has backed include Welab, a Hong Kong-based fintech lender, as well as Beijing’s Bitmain, the world’s largest designer of products for mining cryptocurrencies.
Palm Drive continues to focus heavily on the US for its investments, with at least 80 per cent of its portfolio today coming from the continent. It is, however, scouting for Asian opportunities to further diversify its portfolio.
The source added that Palm Drive recently invested in its first Southeast Asian startup – a Singapore-based company in tech-enabled healthcare services. It did not disclose how large the deal was, but said that Palm Drive typically targets Series A ticket sizes of $1-5 million for direct investments and $10-20 million for co-investments.
NY-based Palm Drive is also open to becoming an LP in other VC funds, particularly those in blockchain, and Southeast Asian VCs. It has been in active conversations with blockchain funds in South Korea and China.
Palm Drive also foresees itself making at least 2-3 exits this year. Its previous exits include Walmart’s $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet.com in 2016, and Palo Alto Network’s $173 million acquisition of cybersecurity company, Redlock last year.
Palm Drive is led by Hendrick Lee and Seamon Chan, both managing partners at the VC firm. According to its official website, the VC has created technology firms worth over $1 trillion in combined market cap.
Palm Drive Capital declined to comment for this story.
