This Japanese VC may be new to Indonesia, but it’s making an impact by backing disruption

Yasuhiro Seo, general manager of IMJ Investment Partners

Yasuhiro Seo, general manager of IMJ Investment Partners, describes his company as an infant in Southeast Asia, but also as a firm that prioritizes disruptive business models and growth potential over anything else.

IMJ Investment Partners was born from Japan’s IMJ digital marketing agency. Seo says he was previously working on web development projects for the company before the now 18-year-old agency decided to launch a venture capital arm. Seo recalls the moment when the then-CFO of IMJ Yuji Horiguch called him into his office to discuss looking at Southeast Asian startup investments.

“He understood that I didn’t have a finance background but I had to believe in myself. If I could optimize my experience in digital marketing with my new career in venture capital, that would be pretty unique,” explains Seo.

IMJ Investment Partners’ Southeast Asian portfolio currently includes names like Indonesian ecommerce giant BukaLapak, mobile agriculture company 8Villages, fintech portal iMoney, pharmaceuticals tech firm mClinica, and real estate site UrbanIndo, among others.

See: mClinica raises funds to jumpstart Asian expansion

Vetting disruptive players one-by-one

According to Seo, IMJ Investment Partners’ preferred ticket size in Southeast Asia is not strictly defined, but he believes US$100,000 to US$500,000 is a good range for investing in early-stage startups in emerging markets like the Philippines and Indonesia.

Seo did not comment on how much money IMJ Investment Partners currently has in its fund, but confirms that IMJ has created a separate fund specifically for startups in the region. “As a VC, we are a one-year-old baby here. Now we have ten startups in Southeast Asia and all of them are awesomely unique,” says Seo. “That has started helping us get attention from potential LPs of our fund.”

While IMJ Investment Partners is relatively new to the budding startup scenes of Jakarta and Manila, Seo claims that simply meeting founders one-by-one on a grassroots level has been the most effective strategy for him while sniffing out promising investments.

Seo claims that at the rate IMJ Investment Partners is going, he will have met and analyzed several hundred startups in Indonesia by year’s end. In the case that Seo doesn’t fully understand a founder’s business model, he says that he makes a habit of going on a “field trip” with the company to get a better idea of its investment potential.

Founders to keep an eye on

Seo admires a couple startups in Indonesia for different reasons. The first one he mentions is fashion ecommerce site PinkEmma. He says:

The site’s approach is quite unique in the way in provides affordable fashion items for mid-end consumers although the domain looks to be targeted for high-end users [...] I always get surprised when I chat with Iwan and Winda, they’ve come out with such [a] unique and disruptive idea.

See also: Quench your thirst for fashion with these 9 Indonesian ecommerce sites

Seo’s second hat tip is toward Ralali, an Indonesian ecommerce site for industrial construction. He says:

It looks like they are in the right spot. If you see the speed of development of each major city in the country, it wouldn’t be so tough to imagine how much Ralali has worked to implement their business. I would keep an eye on Joseph and his team, and expect that they will become the ones proving another business-to-business ecommerce [...] model in this country.

Engaging with IMJ Investment Partners

Seo believes that markets like Jakarta and Manila are the best places to be if founders are looking to tap into huge markets with 100 million potential users or more. He claims one of the biggest challenges IMJ Investment Partners currently faces is growing itself fast enough to help local startups do the same.

Seo says he also hopes that international investors will start taking a larger interest in Indonesia’s tech scene, as that will also help IMJ Investment Partners strategically place itself as a liaison between foreign backers and emerging market founders.

“I guess many startups in Indonesia have brilliant ideas and products. So it is always difficult to pick the best from them,” explains Seo. Advising startups on the best way to approach IMJ Investment Partners, he adds, “If the vision is clear, it will make it easy for us understand how feasible your future growth can be.”

This post This Japanese VC may be new to Indonesia, but it’s making an impact by backing disruption appeared first on Tech in Asia.

This Japanese VC may be new to Indonesia, but it’s making an impact by backing disruption