500 Startups

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Founded by pioneering tech investor Ozi Amanat in 2015, K2 Global is a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Amanat, who moved to Singapore in 2012, is one of Twitter’s early backers, raising $25m to invest in the social media startup that later went public in 2013. The Harvard graduate in psychology and economics also invested in Uber, Spotify and Alibaba during his career as a venture capitalist. Amanat is the chief investment officer of K2 VC, K2 Global and Singapore-based Spice Global controlled by Indian billionaire B K Modi.In 2017, K2 also announced a $183m VC fund focusing on early-stage startups that aim to address global challenges. The majority of K2 limited partners are based outside the US in countries like Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

VNV Global was originally founded as Vostok Nafta in 1996, with its first investment in Russia. The investment vehicle initially focused on investments in agriculture and natural resources, but began to diversify into early consumer internet companies like Avito and Tinkoff Bank. Shares were listed on NASDAQ OMX and the VC pivoted to high-growth tech investments in 2007. In 2015, the name was changed to Vostok New Ventures and shortened to VNV Global in 2020 to reflect its international strategy to expand outside Europe.The mid-cap NASDAQ Stockholm exchange-listed VNV mainly invests in mobility, medtech and marketplaces. It currently has 31 startups in its portfolio and six exits managed to date. Recent investments led by VNV include the $43m Series B funding of London-based food waste app OLIO in September 2021 and the $1.6m seed round of Vietnamese dating app Fika in October 2021. 

Lugard Road Capital is a New York-based hedge fund under the Luxor Capital Group. The fund invests across market segments and geographies, with several late-stage investments included in its current portfolio of 11 startups.In 2021, Lugard and Luxor led the €450m Series F round for Spanish on-demand delivery app Glovo and also joined the $146m Series J round of Indian foodtech Zomato in 2020. Recent investments include participation in the $43m Series B round of food-sharing app OLIO in September 2021 and the June 2021 $28.5m Series C round of Norwegian ocean and air freight benchmarking and market analytics platform Xeneta. 

LeapFrog Investments is an impact-focused investor, managing over $1.6bn in assets mainly investing in Africa and Asia. Its “profit with purpose” has led to investments in startups that provide healthcare, financial services and insurance for low-income consumers. Since it was founded in 2007, LeapFrog has attracted funds from Prudential, AXA, Swiss Re and Omidyar Network, becoming the first impact investor in the world to reach the $1bn milestone. It’s headquartered in South Africa and Singapore.LeapFrog is best known for its investments in the insurance sector. One of the most prominent companies in its portfolio is BIMA, the mobile-based insurance provider that has provided coverage in Ghana, Bangladesh, Cambodia and many other countries. In 2020, LeapFrog invested in Indonesian startup PasarPolis, which is a broker for a wide range of microinsurance products. In the healthcare and biotechnology sectors, LeapFrog has funded Indian genetic diagnostics company MedGenome, as well as Goodlife Pharmacy, a Kenyan company providing access to affordable medicine in the East African country.

Khosla Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based VC, founded in 2004 by Indian-born founder of tech pioneer Sun Microsystems Vinod Khosla. The company has no specific interest in terms of sector but heavily favors “large problems that are amenable to technology solutions” and invests in so-called high potential  'black swans´. Healthcare is a strong focus and its most recent investments include in the Portuguese home physiotherapy tech solution SWORD Health's 2021 $85m Series C and $25m Series B rounds besides its 2020 $17m Series A round which it led. Khosla has over $5bn under management and more than 70 staff, with investments in more than 700 startups, leading more than one-third. Other recent investments include in the July 2021 $75m Series C round of Indian personal health and fitness app HealthifyMe and, the same month, in the $12.5m Series A round of US commercial real estate app for tenants and property managers Jones. 

Founded in 2013 by Ramanan Raghavendran and John Kim, Amasia is a venture capital investment firm based in San Francisco and Singapore. The VC promotes environmental and sustainable innovations that help to reduce consumption, boost recycling and upcycling. Eco-investments include Finch, Treedots and Joro. Finch provides information about a product’s environmental impact to consumers while TreeDots connects grocery suppliers directly with businesses and households. Joro advises users on actionable steps to reduce their carbon footprints.Amasia primarily invests in startups from seed stage up to Series B, but it has also participated in later-stage investments. The VC also aims to encourage conventional offline businesses to go online and optimize supply chain activities. In October 2020, Amasia participated in a $100m Series E round raised by Dialpad, a remote working communication software firm. In September 2021, the VC took a stake in Indonesian fintech Xendit’s $150m Series C round. Tokopedia also joined the Amasia stable in 2016 when the e-commerce platform became Indonesia’s first tech unicorn after the $147m funding round.Other investments include Super, a social commerce platform that improves FMCG distribution to tier-2 and tier-3 cities in Indonesia, online education firm SkillShare and Rainforest Life that acquires and aggregates direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands.

Tony Fadell is the inventor of the iPod, co-inventor of the iPhone, and former CEO and founder of Nest Labs, which was later acquired by Google. He is also an angel investor and head of Paris-based deeptech advisory and investing firm Future Shape, which has over 200 companies in its portfolio and a focus on issues like the electrification and digital connection of things, biomanufacturing and the eradication of waste. Fadell has invested in at least 10 startups, with his most recent disclosed investments having taken place in 4Q20. These included his participation in the $7m seed round of London-based consumer technology and conceptual design house Nothing, the $45m Series B round of US biotech firm and vegan leather maker MycoWorks, well as the $31m Series A round of video call effects and presentation tools company mmhmm. 

Future Positive Capital is a Paris-based VC with a second office in London. Its investments cover deep-technology companies applying AI, biotechnology, synthetic biology, as well as robotics. Co-funded in 2016 by ex-Index Ventures associate Sofia Hmich along with Alexandre Terrien and Michael Rosen; it has made 18 investments to date. In 2019 Future Positive raised over $57m pan-European impact investment fund, claiming that most European VCs are continuing to staying focused on sectors, such as consumer, fintech, and marketing, or web and mobile technologies. Future Positive’s belief is that there is instead, a long-tail of investment opportunities to back businesses that actually tackle “the world’s most pressing problems”.Through this fund, it will back throughout Seed and Series A stages, with the possibility to follow up on Series B investing between around €300,000 and €5m. Since then the company has backed startups in the like of BioBeats, an AI company focused on preventative mental health, cell-based startup Meatable, and more recently NotCo, the Chilean unicorn disrupting the food and beverage sector with AI-enabled plant-based products.The team counts on an extensive network of mentors, innovators, impact angel investors and entrepreneurs such as F1 pilots Nico Rosberg, the MD of Alibaba France Sebastien Badault, the Omid Ashtari the President of Citymapper amongst others.

InnovationRCA is the Royal College of Art’s center for entrepreneurship and commercialization. It supports RCA students, alumni and employees looking to turn their ideas into new businesses. The center was established in 2004 and is based in London.The centre’s activities include providing startup incubation and acceleration services to potential RCA spin-offs. This includes coaching and business mentoring based on RCA’s design-led, user-centric approach, as well as intellectual property advice and support. In addition, the center offers access to office and workshop space, as well as funding. InnovationRCA runs its own angel investor network, AngelClubRCA. It has also partnered with a UK-based VC, Venrex Investment Management, to improve RCA startups’ access to private funding. In addition, the centre conducts programmes for external entrepreneurs and organisations looking to promote innovation and entrepreneurship worldwide.McKinsey has called InnovationRCA a “world-class spinout incubator", praising its work as a "significant driver of entrepreneurial growth” along with its ”impressive results". In July 2019, the UK Business Angels Association also named InnovationRCA its Accelerator of the Year. 

H&M Foundation is a non-profit foundation established in 2013. It is privately funded by the Stefan Persson family, the founders and major shareholders of the H&M Group, who have donated SEK 1.5 billion to it to date. The foundation aims to help accelerate progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030, by developing, funding and sharing solutions to address the world’s most urgent issues. It has a particular focus on promoting a planet-positive fashion industry and on building inclusive societies.Tackling mostly challenges associated with the fast fashion industry and its supply chain, H&M Foundation advocates for more sustainable practices across the fashion value chain and more inclusive business practices. The foundation is also actively involved in providing emergency relief for natural disasters or pandemics. It also aims to encourage innovation that promotes social change and sustainability. To this end, it provides startups support in accelerating and scale new technologies. It also runs the Global Change Award. Dubbed the Nobel Prize of fashion, this aims to recognise disruptive innovations that have the potential to make fashion more sustainable, and transform the way garments are designed, produced, shipped, bought, used and recycled. 

Born in 1968, Jerry Yang is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer. After co-creating the Yahoo internet navigational guide in 1994, he co-founded the company Yahoo! Inc in 1995 with David Filo while both were studying at Stanford University. Yang did not complete his PhD in electrical engineering to become an entrepreneur “selling internet advertising”.Yang was Yahoo! CEO for almost two years until 2009, rejecting Microsoft’s takeover offer of $47.5bn in 2008. He eventually left the board in 2012 when he resigned due to strategic disagreements such as whether to sell all or part of the company. In 2016, Yahoo! completed the sale of its core operating business to Verizon for $5bn. Yang was also a board member of the Alibaba Group from 2006 to 2012. Yang met Jack Ma in 1997 when Ma was working as a government-employed tour guide. The former English teacher gave him a tour of the Great Wall of China. Ma went on to found Alibaba a few months after meeting Yang.After leaving Yahoo!, Yang founded AME Cloud Ventures to invest in multiple tech startups. As of November 2020, Yang’s net worth was valued at $2.3bn. In 2017, he and his wife pledged $25m to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the largest gift in the museum's history.

The European Investment Bank is a pan-European investor based in Luxembourg, and the only bank owned by European Union member states. Founded in 1958, the banks has invested in thousands of businesses and public and private infrastructure projects. It is the largest multilateral borrower and lender by volume and also now has an SME tech focus, with recipients needing to have sustainable business model and, usually, a European focus. In December 2020, the EIB launched a new €150m co-investment fund to support startups leveraging AI across Europe to address what it called “the multibillion-euro funding gap compared with the United States and China.” Its most recent investments include a €20m investment in the €32m Series C round of Portuguese international online print store 360imprimir (BIZAY) and its first spacetech investment, €20m in venture debt investment to Luxembourg-based Spire Global that is building a satellite constellation, both in December 2020.In 4Q 2020, it also invested €10m in Spanish industrial IoT startup Worldsensing, €15m in German identity verification platform IDnow and €15 in German sportstech platform KINEXON.

With currently over $21bn of AUM, Baring Private Equity Asia (BPEA) was started in Hong Kong in 1997 by Jean Eric Salata, as the regional Asian PE investment arm of UK-based Baring Private Equity Partners. With $300m in its first fund, it focused on riding China’s economic rise spurred by the country’s market liberalization. In 2000, Salata led a management buyout of BPEA and continues to head the firm today as CEO and Founding Partner. BPEA has invested in more than 100 companies, across healthcare, logistics, IT services, media, education, financial services and retail. It is one of the largest independent PE firms in Asia and has eight offices across the continent.With offices in China, India, Japan, Australia, and Singapore, it currently has around 43 portfolio companies, almost all Asia-based, across multiple business segments in tech and non-tech startups, especially in bricks-and-mortar education establishments. It also makes acquisitions, including most recently of US outsourcing services company Virtusa in February 2021.Other recent investments include in the June 2021 $85m Series C round of Portuguese home physiotherapy tech solution SWORD Health, the world’s fastest-growing musculoskeletal solution, and in the November 2020 $198m Series D round of Chinese computer coding for kids edtech Codemao. 

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