Southeast Asia Venture Capital News

March 14, 2022

SariSuki raises from Openspace, expands into quick commerce

SariSuki, a fast growing social commerce startup, is expanding into quick commerce with a vision to build an end-to-end eGrocery platform in the Philippines.

March 11, 2022

Ocular by Openspace announces investment into STEPN, a move-to-earn NFT game

‍We are excited to announce that recently, Ocular, the new Web3 focused investment fund managed by Openspace made an investment into STEPN, a move-to-earn NFT game built on Solana.

March 8, 2022

Stronger through diversity: Openspace on International Women’s Day 2022

At Openspace, we see diversity as both a social and business imperative. It’s because we believe that by valuing diversity, we will encourage more diverse idea exchange–a fundamental element of our firm’s Active Intelligence philosophy.

January 21, 2022

Openspace welcomes Omesh Fabiani and Johan Batubara

Today, we have a big pair of announcements: welcome to Omesh Fabiani and also to Johan Batubara–our newest additions to the senior team. Omesh joins as our Chief Financial Officer, and Johan as Executive Director, Indonesia.

January 20, 2022

The Flow will Grow: Why We're Excited About Vietnam

Openspace has always had a pure-play regional focus in Southeast Asia and are excited by what we are beginning to see in the start-up ecosystems in Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. To dig deeper, we recently sat down to have a conversation with the team overseeing Openspace’s activity on-the-ground in Vietnam to understand what’s going on.

January 12, 2022

Pluang Secures Additional $55M in Funding

Pluang, the all-in-one fractional investing app that has become one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing fintech startups, has raised $55 million in a funding round led by Accel, with participation from Openspace.

January 4, 2022

Philippines Rising: The New Startup Hotspot in 2022

Openspace recently spoke with The Ken about the opportunity we've long recognised in the Philippines, and how that led us to build on our portfolio in the country, and lead the Series A in Kumu, whose rapid growth has served as a signal to overseas investors that the country is full of entrepreneurial zest and emergent startups.

December 31, 2021

Shane Chesson Reflects on 2021

Our co-founder, Shane Chesson reflects on a few surprises and key developments in the firm over the past twelve months, as well as muses over his 3 expectations for 2022.

April 4, 2023

Portfolio Company Feature: cheak

We're shining a spotlight on women's activewear brand cheak, which was acquired in 2022 by our portfolio company, Love Bonito. cheak has acquired notable success and recognition as a homegrown brand focusing on inclusivity and instilling confidence in women through activewear. As such, we decided to find out more about what's behind the brand's success by asking co-founder Tiffany Chng several questions on her journey of building cheak.

March 30, 2023

The Craft Revisited: Chris Lemons on Courage

In this week’s edition of The Craft Revisited, our Founding Partner Shane Chesson discusses courage with Chris Lemons. Chris is a saturation diver, and subject of the Netflix documentary, Last Breath. He talks about his near-death experience diving when he was left stranded 100m under the North Sea, alone and in the pitch dark, with only 6 minutes of oxygen left.

March 29, 2023

Meet The Team: Zhe Hao

In today's edition of Meet The Team, we get to know Zhe Hao a little better. He's a Senior Data Analyst here at Openspace, and today, he shares more about his pizza-making skills and other memorable experiences at the office.

March 23, 2023

Capabilities Focus: Emma Payne on Change Management

Change management is a crucial process in any organization that involves making modifications to processes and operations. We've asked Emma Payne, our new VP of People & Culture, to share her valuable insights on the subject. Emma has extensive experience in talent management and change leadership, with her career spanning across the UK and Asia Pacific. Here's what she had to say:

March 20, 2023

The Craft: Roger Martin on Strategy

In this week’s episode of The Craft, Professor Roger Martin discusses with Openspace’s CFO, Omesh Fabiani, on strategy and what it takes to be a good strategic thinker. Roger was named the world’s Number One Management Thinker by Thinker’s 50. Here are several key takeaways from their conversation.

March 15, 2023

Meet The Team: JQ

In today's edition of Meet The Team, we get to know Jess, aka JQ, a little better. She's an analyst on our Investments team and today, she shares more about her love for sweets and her experiences here at Openspace.

March 10, 2023

OpenHours Mentee Experience: Stella

Stella Wang is an alumni of our OpenHours program, where she was Freddie's, our VP for brand and marketing, mentee. We asked her about her thoughts on the OpenHours program, and here's what she had to say:

March 9, 2023

Diversity: Omesh Fabiani on Work-Life Flexibility

In line with our guiding principles committing to gender diversity at Openspace, we decided to ask our CFO, Omesh Fabiani, on how he achieves work-life flexibility.

March 8, 2024

Openspace and IWD 2024 - “Inspiring Inclusion”

Each year on the 8th of March, we see from around the world and within Southeast Asia, how we steadily close the gender gap in traditionally male-dominated fields

November 2, 2023

Meet the Team: Trang Vi

Meet Trang, our investment team member steering the ship through the dynamic waters of the Vietnamese market.

October 18, 2023

The Craft Revisited: Daniel Levin on Negotiation

Today, we are revisiting a previous episode of “The Craft” with Daniel Levin on Negotiation.

July 27, 2023

Recommendation: On Strategy Showcase Podcast (Liquid Death: the water brand that thinks like a beer)

June 29, 2023

Thought Leadership: Freddie at the Maker Lab Marketing Panel (The Art of Storytelling: How to Make Your Brand Stand Out?)

September 9, 2024

Openspace Sustainability Progress Report 2023

Awareness of ESG issues has grown significantly but translating this into real, deliberate action has been slow. To highlight how we are moving from awareness to action, we are pleased to release our 4th annual Sustainability Progress Report

October 3, 2023

Nano: How Earned Wage Access is Improving Employee Financial Wellbeing in Vietnam

The report was conducted in early 2023 by Center for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP), a non-profit centre established by Temasek Trust to advance the impact investing ecosystem in Asia

August 30, 2023

Reaping the Regional Dividend: The Southeast Asia Coalesce Index

Openspace and Stripe release Reaping the Regional Dividend: The Southeast Asia Coalesce Index, which studies the extent to which the region is growing closer together, and the upside opportunities that brings.

August 11, 2023

Openspace Releases Sustainability Progress Report 2022

We are pleased to be publishing our 2022 Sustainability Progress Report for the third year! In this report, we do a deep dive on ESG issues material to tech companies in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on consumer protection principles, responsible AI, and cybersecurity and data governance.

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