This quarter, Altara Ventures closed 1 new investment, Allra, bringing our portfolio to 17 companies. Allra is a Korean fintech that provides early payment services to ecommerce merchants. We continue to support our existing portfolio and entrepreneurs, closing a US$5.4M Pre-Series A+ follow-on financing round for Kyan Technologies.
PolicyStreet received an "a" rating from the Malaysian insurance regulator LECA for their Labuan (offshore) license. This signals PolicyStreet's readiness to emerge as a serious player in the reinsurance sector, opening up the potential to deepen its partnerships, widen client coverage, and narrow the protection gap for the underserved segments in Malaysia and beyond.
Kyan Technologies entered two partnerships in Southeast Asia. The first is a strategic collaboration with Mandaya Hospital Group, a leading Indonesian hospital group that operates Mandaya Royal Hospital Puri, a 250+ bed state-of-the-art cancer center. This partnership will integrate Kyan's precision oncology platform into Mandaya's healthcare services, providing oncologists with personalized treatment insights to enhance patient outcomes. In addition, Kyan also entered a strategic partnership with OncoCare Malaysia, a leading private cancer specialist and treatment group in Malaysia.
Stashfin secured US$3.1M in its first External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) from Alterna Bank in partnership with Kilde, marking it as the first Indian fintech and NBFC to obtain overseas debt from multiple partners. This ECB, part of Stashfin's liability differentiation strategy, boosts its capacity to meet India's credit needs and reinforces its international credibility.
We warmly welcome Jun Ho Bae, Senior Associate, and Teddy Peralta, Senior Analyst, as the newest members of our investment team based in Singapore! With 8 years of experience investing in Southeast Asian startups, Jun Ho joins us from Tenity, where he led 48 early stage fintech and insurtech investments across Asia Pacific. Teddy joins Altara from Arbor Ventures, where he evaluated fintech deals across Southeast Asia, MENA and the United States.
We are also pleased to announce the promotions of Jamaine Lee to Senior Analyst in Q2 2024 and Bryan Ngadimin to Senior Analyst in Q3 2024. Congratulations Jamaine and Bryan!
General Partner Dave Ng recently spoke at the Canada-in-Asia Investment conference where he touched upon topics regarding circular economy, renewable energy and tech for good. During the panel, he provided guidance to Canadian and North American founders on the topic of global expansion, especially cross border business relations with Asia.
27 January 2025, marked a seismic shift in the global AI landscape with the debut of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI powerhouse that unleashed its Large Language Model (LLM) R1. With an unprecedented level of compute efficiency, DeepSeek has positioned itself as a challenger to American LLMs, raising concerns about the shifting dynamics in AI dominance.
Key Implications for Southeast Asia:
Application-Led Growth: As LLMs become increasingly commoditized, Southeast Asian startups can harness DeepSeek's open-source models and low-cost APIs to develop groundbreaking applications.
A Geopolitical Hotspot for Near-Shoring: Amid rising U.S.-China tensions and anticipated tariff hikes, global companies are relocating manufacturing, data centers, and operational hubs to neutral Southeast Asian states. Thailand attracting over $10 billion in data center infrastructure investments from Google, AWS, TikTok, and others.
A Long-Term Talent Surge: The influx of global multinational corporations (MNCs) and open access to cutting-edge AI will create an upskilling revolution, positioning Southeast Asia as a formidable AI hub.
