Doubling Down on Southeast Asia

By Team Sequoia Southeast Asia

Ten years ago, we signed a lease for a small room in a quiet building in Singapore to help our portfolio companies expand into Southeast Asia. As our team spent more time in the region, we started to discover a fledgling tech ecosystem that showed many of the same early signs of growth we had seen in markets such as India and China before. We met bold young founders brimming with ideas and ambition, consumers who were raring to use digital products, and businesses that were starting to rapidly adopt software. What started as a small experiment has now expanded into Sequoia Southeast Asia – an office of over 40 people across 12 nationalities, a large portfolio of seed, venture and growth investments, and a hub for programs like Surge and Spark, all driven by a growing conviction in the potential of our markets.

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our first dedicated SEA fund, Sequoia SEA Fund I, an $850 million corpus that we will use to partner with the next generation of founders on a mission to build enduring companies from the region.

Over these years, our portfolio companies in Southeast Asia have often left us in awe about the depth of the market opportunity. From Gojek, Tokopedia and Traveloka’s rapid emergence, to leading the consumer internet revolution in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, to Kopi Kenangan’s ascent as a consumer brand, we have been surprised by the depth of the ecosystem in Indonesia. And with the global success of Biofourmis, Insider and Appier as AI pioneers, we are excited to see these “SEA to global” technology companies emerge. In the last couple of years, we have witnessed the emergence of a thriving web3 ecosystem and also seeing new waves of innovation in markets like Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia.

With the new fund, Sequoia Southeast Asia will continue to invest actively at the seed, Series A, and growth stages in companies across our region. We will continue to bring our large portfolio specialist teams to partner with founders in their crucible moments. We will continue to support seed-stage companies and women founders with programs like Surge and Spark. And we will double down on initiatives to collaborate across our ecosystem – with founders, governments, co-investors, and partners – to help our region emerge larger, healthier, and more sustainable than ever before.

This year marks Sequoia Capital’s 50th anniversary and our tenth year in Southeast Asia. We are excited for what the next decade and beyond will bring, and we look forward to partnering with more of the daring founders of today to thrive in the largest markets of tomorrow.