Vietnam’s Touchstone Partners to roll out second fund to fuel tech startups

Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered venture capital (VC) firm Touchstone Partners is set to raise its second fund to continue financing Vietnam's tech landscape, with the new fund’s target size undisclosed.

“The Touchstone Mid Cap Growth Fund seeks to increase the value of fund shares as a primary goal and to earn income as a secondary goal,” writes the Vietnamese firm’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), dated July 28.

This 11-page brief prospectus does not show the target size.

The Touchstone Partners move came while Vietnam’s tech startup scene is continuing to attract VC investments, pushing the country further towards its aim of becoming a fully digital society by 2030. South Korea-based Shinhan Venture Investment is planning to increase its Southeast Asia focus with the $200-million flagship global fund that it completed raising a few months ago.

"We are focusing on Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. We are sector- and stage-agnostic, and our investments span from seed to pre-IPO. Our strength is that we can leverage our subsidiaries, such as banks, insurance and credit cards in Vietnam, Indonesia and Japan to support our founders and help them expand to other regions,” JinSoo Lee, head of global investment at the fund told Nikkei Asia in a mid-July report by the Japanese newspaper.

In May, Touchstone Partners announced the Vietnamese homegrown firm and Singapore-based Clime Capital were jointly investing $2 million in Stride, an innovative clean technology company also based in HCMC like Touchstone Partners.

To date, Touchstone Partners has invested in 23 startups including Selex Motors (a Vietnamese maker of electric two-wheelers and battery packs), Medigo (healthcare), Credify (fintech), and Prep.vn (edtech). It mainly injects from $500,000 to $2 million per deal.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, during her Vietnam visit July 20-21 to boost bilateral trade and economic ties, came to visit a Selex Motors factory in Hanoi. Climate change poses an existential threat to the world but also provides a “key economic opportunity” and way to build “greater resilience into our economies,” she said, describing the plant as “impressive.”

In April, Selex raised $3 million in a convertible note investment round led by existing investor Asian Development Bank's venture arm ADB Ventures. The three other investors were Touchstone Partners and two foreign investment funds but ADB Ventures did not disclose the two names.

Touchstone was founded in 2020 by Tran Nhat Khanh, former founding partner of the country's largest VC investment fund VinaCapital Ventures, and Ngo Thuy Ngoc Tu, co-founder and chairwoman of Yola Education, an edtech firm.

E-commerce, SaaS (software as a service), healthcare technology, and electronic vehicle sectors are where Touchstone seeks to invest in.

VinaCapital Ventures of leading Vietnamese asset and investment company VinaCapital said last October that it planned to launch its second fund in 2023 with a target size of $100 million, focusing on providing growth capital.

The new fund, VinaCapital Ventures II, will be for sizes up to $10 million per investment at the Series A+ and Series B stages, said HCMC-headquartered VinaCapital, a Vietnamese leading investment management firm with a diversified portfolio of around $4 billion.