This week, we released our quarterly report on the state of startup funding in Southeast Asia. There was no let-up in the funding drought in the third quarter as equity funding rounds fell to 112 —the weakest quarterly performance in over six years.
Nevertheless, total capital raised surged to $2.27 billion in Q3, largely due to a single mega-deal: Singapore-based data centre firm Princeton Digital Group secured $1.3 billion in growth capital.
The report says that the relative strength of late-stage activity in recent quarters signals early signs of resilience. It further argues that for founders nearing scale, this could open windows for strategic capital raises, albeit in a more disciplined, metrics-driven environment. For investors, it points to a gradual reawakening of appetite, concentrated in fewer but higher-conviction bets.
Moving on to the other headlines.
LP-GP news
Federated Hermes is broadening its Asia footprint, committing to India and Japan after a long hiatus and adding allocations across Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. The firm is no longer actively deploying GP capital in China and remains selective. “We are positive on the ‘capital boomerang’ coming out of China and constructive on India and Japan,” Brooks Harrington, Chief Investment Officer, Private Equity at Federated Hermes said.
Malaysia’s Ekuinas has so far been focused on private equity buyouts and growth sectors. Now, the state investor is launching a strategy aimed at helping smaller local companies grow and ultimately access capital. This programme will sit alongside the firm’s existing PE and recently started private credit strategies.
A Vietnamese diaspora movement has launched a new investment vehicle, OV Ventures, to back founders of Vietnamese origin building globally-focused companies — reflecting the growing trend of overseas Vietnamese channelling capital, talent, and networks into the country’s emerging innovation ecosystem.
Shanghai State-Owned Capital Investment, which manages $19.6 billion in assets, has signed 10 GPs to provide the so-called “patient capital” to fund biopharma innovations in the financial hub.
HDFC Capital, the real estate PE arm of the HDFC Group, is close to onboarding a sovereign wealth fund from West Asia as a co-investor in its sixth investment vehicle.
In the latest edition of our private equity newsletter, Beyond the Buyout, we track the rising appetite of Japan’s powerhouse LPs, the rebound of China’s PE-backed IPOs, and fresh opportunities in the infrastructure sector.
From our Greater China desk
Fundraising by Chinese humanoid robot companies has grown exponentially this year to surpass $1.7 billion in the first seven months—more than double the $771.8 million raised throughout 2024. The latest fundraiser is Tencent-backed Leju Robotics, which has raised $210.5 million in a pre-IPO financing round.
In one of the biggest investments in a Chinese AI application startup so far this year, AI content generation platform LiblibAI has raised $130 million in a Series B funding round from HongShan and CMC Capital Partners.
Zelostech, a Chinese developer of Level 4 self-driving urban logistics vehicles, has raised $100 million in a new tranche to bring its fundraising total at the Series B stage to $400 million. Chinese fintech giant Ant Group led the Series B4 round, with participation from both new and old shareholders such as Blue Lake Capital and Baidu Venture.
MBK Partners is selling the Chinese premium beauty chain Siyanli to Hong Kong-listed Beauty Farm for $175 million, marking a full exit. The North Asia-focused PE firm first picked a 23.53% stake in the company in 2019 and increased its stake to 100% in the years that followed. In a similar deal, Beauty Farm had purchased 70% of the Chinese beauty brand Naturade for $49.1 million in 2024.
KKR and Quadrantis Capital, a Portuguese fund, have agreed to buy minority stakes in Peak Re, a Hong Kong-based emerging market reinsurance specialist that is majority-owned by Fosun International.
Deal exclusives
Beleaguered aquaculture startup eFishery’s plans to divest parts of its technology portfolio have quietly come to a halt. At least four potential buyers—agritech platform Gokomodo, Sakti Biru Indonesia (SBI), Japfa’s shrimp-unit PT Suri Tani Pemuka (STP), and Dubai-based Aqua Bridge Group—had engaged in deal talks with the company earlier this year.
Even as venture capital tightens across Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s consumer retail sector is proving to be a rare bright spot. In a recent deal, lifestyle retail chain K-Life is said to have raised a “double-digit commitment (USD)” as part of its pre-Series A round, while eyewear brand SATURDAYS is preparing to raise a $5-10 million round.
Granite Asia-backed Singaporean AI startup Wiz.AI has raised funding from new and existing shareholders.
Funding updates
Singapore-based wealth management platform Endowus has raised over $70 million in new funding to drive its regional expansion and enhance AI-powered advisory services. The round, led by Illuminate Financial, includes a $20 million equity raise and the conversion of existing notes, bringing total funding to over $130 million.
Philippine non-bank lender Asialink Group of Companies has secured a $75-million syndicated term loan arranged by Standard Chartered Bank to further expand its loan portfolio this year.
In a confirmation of a DealStreetAsia report in early August, Indonesian F&B startup Hangry announced it has raised $10.5 million in a Series A5 round led by existing backer Alpha JWC Ventures.
Pave Bank, a fully-licensed commercial bank with a Singaporean holding company, has announced raising $39 million in a funding round anchored by US venture capital firm Accel.
Partners Group is selling its minority stake in Singapore-based Apex Logistics to majority shareholder Kuehne+Nagel Group, the world’s leading sea and air freight company. The transaction gives Partners Group a full exit and “a strong return” from the investment it made in 2021.
A unit of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and an affiliate of Singapore’s GIC have taken significant minority stakes in women’s health company Hologic, which has been taken private in a buyout by Blackstone and TPG. The buyout pegs Hologic‘s enterprise value at up to $18.3 billion.
Analysis and deep dives
Four years after its blockbuster $1.52-billion IPO, Indonesian e-commerce firm Bukalapak has utilised only 58.19% of the proceeds from the share sale. At the time of the IPO, the company had proposed to use the proceeds for acquisitions, debt repayment, business expansion and joint ventures. Analysts warn that if the remaining IPO funds are not fully deployed by the end of 2025, Bukalapak could face renewed investor scepticism over its growth roadmap.
India’s startup funding landscape witnessed a noticeable dip in the third quarter of 2025, with just five megadeals (worth $100 million and above) collectively raising $839 million. This marks the lowest quarterly total for megadeals so far this year, down from seven megadeals worth $1 billion in Q2, and a sharp drop from the $1.34 billion across seven megadeals in Q1.
Lastly, from Vietnam, we featured an interview with Ascend Vietnam Ventures‘ general partners Eddie Thai and Binh Tran to discuss the country’s tech investment landscape, which is entering a phase of “painful stabilisation”. While a full cycle recovery will take “two or three more quarters”, the current rebound in venture activity is a positive shift led by healthier seed rounds and a more disciplined investor base, they said.
