Southeast Asia’s tech start-ups could be valued at $1 trillion by 2025, venture capital firm predicts

Southeast Asia’s technology start-ups had a combined valuation of $340 billion last year and that figure may jump more than threefold by 2025, according to Jungle Ventures. Over the next four years, Jungle expects the region’s tech start-ups to be collectively valued at $1 trillion. In its calculations, the Southeast Asian venture capital firm looked at publicly available information on 31 start-ups with a minimum valuation of $250 million. It also made provisions to account for issues like many venture capital transactions not being publicly disclosed.

Southeast Asia is home to some 400 million internet users and 10% of them went online for the first time in 2020. The internet economy in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — the largest economies in the region — is predicted to cross $300 billion by 2025, according to a commonly cited industry report from Google, Temasek Holdings and Bain & Company.

There is no dearth of funding options available to the region’s start-ups as investors, including private equity, write large checks. Southeast Asian start-ups reportedly raised a record $6 billion in the first three months of the year. A number of the region’s prominent start-ups are in the process of going public, and some of them have already announced blockbuster initial public offering plans.

Going public via blank-check companies would open the start-ups to greater scrutiny from investors — especially those in the U.S., according to Michael Lints, a partner at Golden Gate Ventures.

Southeast Asia’s tech start-ups could be valued at $1 trillion by 2025, venture capital firm predicts, CNBC, Aug 9