AMRA NAIDOO

Co-Founder & General Partner, Accelerating Asia One of the major challenges we faced was the disruption to our portfolio companies — some had to halt operations and pivot. Others in eCommerce, healthtech, and logistics experienced exponential growth which comes with its own challenges. So, we focused on portfolio management, jumping on calls, providing advice and support on pivots, cashflow management and more. Fintech, especially BNPL, had significant investor interest in 2020, which is likely to continue into 2021 given the market opportunity that exists in Southeast Asia where 73 per cent of the population is underbanked. We are also likely to see late-stage funding into the digitization of traditional industries — eCommerce, edutech, logistics, healthtech, agritech — that were accelerated by the pandemic. It is this potential for follow-on and later stage capital combined with market conditions that creates favorable conditions for early-stage and pre-Series A investing. We’ve invested across all these verticals at the early stage because we believe there is opportunity for investment returns to be had. We have been focused on investing in startups where the potential for scalable environmental and social impact is embedded into the business model.