Pan-Asian venture capital (VC) firm Gobi Partners announced the closing of its US$10 million Gobi SuperSeed II (Gobi SSII) Fund following the participation of Allianz Malaysia Berhad (Allianz Malaysia) as a Limited Partner (LP).
Other LPs backing the Gobi SSII Fund are institutional investors Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd (MAVCAP) and Sunway Group.
The Gobi SSII Fund targets early-stage (Seed, Series Pre-A and Series A) technology-enabled local startups operating within Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud, e-commerce, FinTech, Internet of Things, and Halal-economy-focused segments, which have the capability to scale up and bring sizeable returns to the Malaysian economy.
“Allianz Malaysia is one of the very few corporates that has been at the forefront in driving digital innovation in Malaysia, and as one of the earliest regional VCs to set up shop in Malaysia, Gobi is very proud to have them on board as one of our key LPs,” said Gobi co-founder and chairman, Thomas G. Tsao. “We believe that both the fund and the portfolio companies will benefit substantially from Allianz’s ecosystem locally here in Malaysia as well as globally.”
Since its launch in late 2020, the Gobi SSII Fund has already invested in four Malaysian startups namely the innovation arm of Sunway Group and Sunway University, Sunway Innovation Labs; technology news platform, TechNode; SPEEDHOME; and PolicyStreet.
Given the early-stage nature of the fund, the Gobi SSII Fund can invest in up to 25 portfolio companies. Gobi, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, has raised 15 funds to date with US$1.5 billion in assets under management, invested in over 320 startups and nurtured nine unicorns.
“Allianz Malaysia’s appetite for digital change has allowed us to capitalise on tremendous new opportunities and explore innovation-led collaborations for the last couple of years. Our general insurance arm, Allianz General Insurance Company (Malaysia) Berhad, was an early partner of insurance technology firm PolicyStreet and online property rental platform SPEEDHOME (both established in 2017), which are two of Gobi’s portfolio companies. So, we are delighted to join Gobi Partners as one of their LPs. This is our first investment in a VC, and we look forward to the milestones we can accomplish together,” said Allianz Malaysia CEO Sean Wang.
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