AC Ventures Becomes New Entity of Agaeti Ventures and Convergence Ventures

Two venture capital firms (venture capital) local companies, Agaeti Ventures and Convergence Ventures, today officially announced the merger and are now known as AC Ventures (ACV). The Partners of both companies became Partners of this new company, namely Adrian Li, Michael Soerijadji, Donald Wihardja, and Pandu Sjahrir.

These four partners will lead a joint team of 6 investment professionals and an operational team. The company ensures that no employees arelay off related to this business combination.

Focus AC Ventures is to invest in 35 early-stage startups in the next 3 years. The funding priorities are startups in the e-commerce sector, digital content-based services, fintech, and technology for SMEs.

"From building key businesses to C-level hiring and follow-up funding, we have the knowledge, experience and network to support founders closely," said Donald.

AC Ventures

ACV is said to have been formalized since Q3 2019. They claim to have started investing with new entities, through Partner funds, over the last 6 months, but are not yet willing to announce who the new portfolio is and how much funds are currently under management.

To DailySocial, Michael and Donald reveal the current fund--the third managed fund for Agaeti, Convergence, and ACV--still not fully closed. They said that the largest percentage of their LPs were foreigners. Included in the LP's lineup for this fund are regional digital corporations, local conglomerates, and venture fund founders in the United States and China.

Michael and Donald mentioned ticket sizes per startup of newly managed funds will be greater than ticket sizes their former, which ranged from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars.

Michael said, "The first wave of investment [in Indonesia] has accelerated technology adoption in online shopping, transportation, travel and fintech. Nonetheless, Indonesia is still quite young on the [technology] adoption curve and the next wave will see disruption in more traditional spaces. and [creating] new opportunities."

From the previous fund, ACV has invested in 70 startups in total, with Convergence having 5 exit and Agaeti has 1 exit. The managed funds owned by each are said to have been fully allocated.

After this merger, each portfolio will still be managed separately. Nonetheless, portfolio startups will gain access to these new partnerships to support their startup growth.

One of the partnerships created is the potential for advanced funding through Indies Capital, because Pandu Sjahrir is also a Managing Partner at Indies Capital.

"Our goal is to consolidate our resources to create a platform with exponential value that can provide significant support for the Founders of our startup portfolio to build and grow their business throughout Indonesia - the largest market in Southeast Asia," said Adrian.

Consolidation trend

The establishment of ACV is the first consolidated VC company to be officially announced in Indonesia. After the first wave of investment in the last 10 years, several venture capital companies are said to have started consolidating in order to collect the next stage of managed funds.

After Arya Setiadharma joined the ranks of MDI Ventures Partners, Prasetia Dwidharma is said to have joint management with Everhaus with the Prasetia Everhaus Ventures entity. Another rumor says that Koru Ventures Singapore is now co-managing the Venturra Capital portfolio.

This trend is expected to continue, given the uncertain global conditions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, investors still agree that Indonesia has tremendous potential and they are committed to supporting the growth of local startups.

"Indonesia has had track record clearly to create billions of dollars worth of technology-based businesses. With Indonesia estimated to be one of the world's largest economies, based on GDP in 2030, we are still in the early phase of creating future values ​​through technology," said Pandu.