OurCrowd opens Singapore office to tap Asia promise

Crowdfunding site sees Asian funding grow to over half of recent investments

By Shoshanna Solomon

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28 November 2016, 2:08 pm

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Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter

OurCrowd, a Jerusalem-based crowdfunding venture capital platform, said it has opened an office in Singapore, its seventh worldwide, to serve Asian investors interested in funding early stage high-growth companies.

“Asia is one of our fastest growing markets and following our launch in Singapore, we will be looking to take OurCrowd further into the ASEAN market,” said OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved. “Our business in Asia has grown five times since 2014, both in terms of the number of investors on the platform and investment dollars committed on our platform.”

OurCrowd’s Asian funding now represents over half of the funding recently invested on the site, Medved said.

Israeli technologies have seen a spike in interest from Asian investors who are scouring the country looking for cutting edge technologies. Asian giants including Alibaba Group, Hutchison Water Ltd., and Huawei have set up R&D centers, invested in funds and snapped up Israeli startups and companies. Chinese conglomerates like the Kuang-Chi Group have set up funds and are investing in Israeli companies.

The Singapore office opening follows OurCrowd’s announcement earlier this year that it has partnered with United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Sassoon Investment Corporation (SassCorp) to look for equity crowdfunding opportunities in startups and small businesses in the region. OurCrowd also received a formal license to begin operating in Singapore from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in August 2016.

“Asia more broadly, and Singapore in particular, is becoming a globally recognized financial hub for the next generation of innovative technology companies,” Medved said. “We expect to tap into exciting new deal flow, as well as bring more and more Asian investors to join us in funding global technology companies.”

The company has appointed Denes Ban as managing partner for Asia and head of OurCrowd’s Singapore Management company.

In over three years OurCrowd has invested over $320 million from its group of 16,000 accredited investors in its portfolio of 100 companies and five funds, which span investment sectors including mobility and transportation, machine learning, cybersecurity, digital Health, agtech, big data, and robotics.