BrazilBain & Company buys APAC arm of venture studio Rainmaking
Bain & Company has expanded its venture and business-building capabilities in Asia with the acquisition of the Asia Pacific wing of Rainmaking.
Founded and headquartered in Denmark, Rainmaking is a corporate innovation and venture development firm. The firm’s 10 studios around the world help startup founders with incubating and scaling their business (mainly through accelerator programs), and corporates with accelerating their corporate venturing agenda.
The company’s Asia Pacific arm, which comprises 50 staff across Singapore, Japan and South Korea, has now joined Bain & Company, one of the world’s leading strategy and management consulting firms.
“Our vision is to be the leading venture-building studio in Asia Pacific,” said Florian Hoppe, a leader at Bain & Company. “By joining forces with Rainmaking’s Asia Pacific team, we can help clients validate, build, and scale new businesses during a time when companies are forced to innovate, especially as we see disruptions through emerging technologies.”
Rainmaking’s 50-person team will be integrated within NextSM, Bain & Company’s business-building practice, which now has around 200 professionals. Rainmaking will however retain its brand and continue to operate independently.
“Building new engines of growth is a top priority for our clients. Our NextSM offering has delivered strong results in innovation and business-building for our clients, and our acquisition of Rainmaking’s Asia Pacific team marks the next critical step in scaling our capabilities to create market-leading results for clients,” said Satish Shankar, Asia Pacific regional managing partner at Bain & Company.
The deal comes at the sidelines of a collaboration between the two companies. Both Bain & Company and Rainmaking were appointed to participate in the Corporate Venture Launchpad 2.0 program, a SGD 20 million initiative launched by the Singapore Economic Development Board.
Over the years, Rainmaking has helped build and scale ventures across many industries, including agriculture, energy, natural resources & cleantech, engineering, real estate & commercial property, retail, and financial services.
“With Bain as our backer, we will now be able to launch more studios and ventures; benefit from a greater volume of deeper partnerships with corporations and industry leaders; and drive significantly greater opportunity and upside for the people that work with us, build with us, and launch new ventures with us,” said Samuel Hall, CEO of Rainmaking in Asia Pacific.
