BrazilEY matchmaking platform helps raise $12 billion for ASEAN start-ups
Global professional services firm Ernst & Young has played business cupid on over $12 billion in capital-raising deals for ASEAN enterprises through its matchmaking platform MATCH.
Curated by Ernst & Young in conjunction with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the MATCH (Meet ASEAN’s Talents and Champions) portal was established to promote global private equity and venture capital inflow for next-generation ASEAN enterprises – with the match-making platform featuring as a component of the expanded 2018 Singapore FinTech Festival – Global Investor Summit, to be held on 13th and 14th of November.
With initial registrations opened through the months of May to September, and a Deal Day hosted by EY and MAS earlier this month to introduce prospective investors to their enterprise matches through more than 400 arranged meetings, MAS has now announced that investors have indicated their intention to collectively invest more than $12 billion in capital, with over half of that currently slated for the coming year and the remained earmarked over the subsequent two.
MAS Deputy Managing Director Jacqueline Loh said of the result; “The 2018 MATCH exercise demonstrates the upward momentum in both the supply of and demand for growth capital in ASEAN. The interest of the global investment community in our region is promising. MATCH presents a great opportunity to ensure that private capital is deployed towards the development of promising ASEAN enterprises. MAS is committed to supporting this process.”
According to MAS, the deals were generated between the 380 participating investors and 840 enterprises through the platform’s 17,000 ‘matches’, with the total of intended capital investment said to be higher than the demand for financing from the participating enterprises. And although this year’s Investor Summit was expanded to include deal-making beyond the fintech sector (with $2 billion pledged last year), fintech start-ups together with budding healthcare and medical technology companies still attracted the majority of the interest – at around 60 percent, with the ICT sector also popular.
“On the back of fast-growing economies, a digital-savvy young middle-income population and high mobile and internet penetration rates, we see a thriving entrepreneur and startup ecosystem across ASEAN particularly in the technology and FinTech sectors,” commented Max Loh, Managing Partner, EY ASEAN and Singapore. “Having said that, many SMEs continue to face challenges in seeking access to funding or opportunities to connect with the right investors. Participating investors have told us that they found the Deal Day event useful as it helps them to effectively uncover potential start-ups to invest in.”
EY will continue to connect matched investors and enterprises according to mutual profiles beyond the Deal Day and the Global Investors Summit, with over 30,000 delegates from the fintech and investment community expected to attend the Singapore FinTech Festival – the largest annual global gathering for the fintech community. Fellow Big Four firms Deloitte and KPMG are among the festival’s major sponsors, with a number of international consulting leaders scheduled to speak throughout the event.
