AC Ventures Secured 823 Billion Rupiah Fund, Targeting 30 Early-Stage Startups in Indonesia

AC Ventures (ACV) today (12/10) announced the first close of ACV III Capital L.P. worth of $56 million or the equivalent of 823 billion Rupiah. It is said to be invested in 30 potential startups over the next three years. ACV III is targeted to reach $80 million or the equivalent of 1.1 trillion Rupiah for early-stage startup investment in Indonesia.

ACV is particularly interested to explore investment opportunities in startups in the fields of e-commerce, fintech, supporting SMEs, and digital media. Some of their previous portfolios include Shipper, Kargo, Stockbit, BukuWarung, ESB, CoLearn, KitaBeli, Aruna, and Soul Parking.

"Our fund LPs include leading digital and strategic corporates, local Indonesian conglomerates, as well as technology entrepreneurs who have scaled billion-dollar businesses," the Managing Partner, Adrian Li said.

ACV is a partnership venture capital firm, consisting of 3 partners, 6 professional investors, and supporting teams. Prior to becoming ACV, Convergence Ventures and Agaeti Ventures managed funds through CVI ('15) and AVI ('18) with respective returns of 31% and 48%.

Investment in time of the pandemic

Indonesia's digital economy is growing at an unprecedented rate in 2020 due to the "disruption" of the Covid-19 pandemic. Next, many venture capitalists have to revisit the condition of the ecosystem. Regarding this, the ACV team told DailySocial that they had witnessed several interesting trends developing in all startup portfolios. This certainly raises enthusiasm to continue investing in sectors in the investment thesis.

"[Due to Covid-19] We don’t have a stringent criterion, as for every company, business model, and sector, we need to have a different approach in doing the due diligence. We evaluate companies based on market potential, founders, and traction/proof of product-market fit perspective. However, we do want to see companies that can scale but also have a path to positive unit economics," Adrian added.

As conditions vary, including demographics, ACV is quite confident that the startup ecosystem in Indonesia will be quite promising. The market will continue to accelerate in adopting technology support. For this reason, it is an opportunity for digital startups to become a billion-dollar company, especially in critical sectors such as fintech, logistics, also education, health, agriculture, and SME support.

"We look for founders that demonstrate resilience and willingness to adapt the businesses in the face of adversity. As for competition, it is not unusual to see many players in a particular space, since it just reaffirms the opportunity of the sector. The markets we invest in tend to be large enough to accommodate a few players. It’s not always a winner takes all outcome. We are confident that our founders have incredible potential to succeed in their respective sectors," Adrian added.

Besides Adrian Li, as the founder partner of ACV, there are Michael Soerijadji and Pandu Sjahrir who represent Indies Capital. It is said that ACV's ambition is to take advantage of the founders' industry insights, provide support, and a global network to empower founders to build businesses that are able to democratize various fields in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian