SeedPlus is the early stage fund and will focus on deals in the US$360,000 to US$720,000 range.

Singapore-based early stage VC SeedPlus has announced it has reached the final close of its S$25 million (US$18 million) debut fund.

This was accomplished via fresh investments from Cisco Investments, the investment arm of Cisco Systems Inc., and Eight Roads Ventures, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Limited.

The firm also announced the joining of Chirayu Wadke as a Partner leading IoT investments. Prior to this Chirayu led strategic business development for a number of product areas at Google.

SeedPlus also had prior investments from SGInnovate, Accel Partners (India) and Ratan Tata’s RNT Associates. Last month, it received US$2 million funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.

“The closing of the fund reinforces our confidence that investors see Asia as a dynamic region where entrepreneurship is flourishing and funding for startups will take them to the next level of growth,” said Pravan Malhotra, Head, Asia internet investments at IFC, in an official press statement.

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SeedPlus will focus on making deals between S$500,000 (US$360,000) to S$1 million (US$720,000) in size. It will target verticals such as SaaS, fintech, AI and cyber security.

Its current investments include Moglix, an Indian B2B e-commerce platform specializing in the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) industry; Mimetic.ai, a Singaporean technology startup responsible for creating Evie, an artificial intelligence (AI) scheduling assistant; and Homage, a Singapore-based startup that connects in-home caregivers with elderly people seeking assistance.

The fund is run by three operating partners — Michael Smith Jr, who was CTO at streaming service HOOQ, former Spotify product manager Gabriel Lundberg and Tiang Lim Foo, who led Evernote’s market development in APAC.

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The post Singapore VC SeedPlus closes U$18M for first fund, previous investors include World Bank unit and SGInnovate appeared first on e27.

Source: e27