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SoftBank Joins Record Indonesia-Focused Growth Venture Fund

SoftBank Joins Record Indonesia-Focused Growth Venture Fund

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SoftBank Group Corp. has joined other backers in a $200 million venture capital fund that will focus on unearthing promising startups in Indonesia.

Investors are increasingly looking to Southeast Asia’s largest economy, where internet and mobile penetration is expanding at a rapid clip. The Japanese tech powerhouse joins investors including Pavilion Capital and Indies Capital in contributing to the fund, which closed after surpassing an initial target of $150 million.

SoftBank Joins Record Indonesia-Focused Growth Venture Fund

The Singapore-based fund will be run by EV Growth -- a venture between Indonesia’s Sinar Mas group, East Ventures and an arm of Yahoo Japan Corp. -- and explore investments across a broad swathe of industries.

“This is the largest Indonesia-focused growth fund to date,” said Willson Cuaca, one of three partners that lead EV Growth. “This fund is aimed at creating more unicorns.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Robert Fenner

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