SEA Horizons
An Opportunity Brief for LPs Investing in SEA.
The Time for Venture in Southeast Asia!
August 2025
Southeast Asia: The Next Frontier in Venture
Southeast Asia’s (SEA) economic growth in 2025 is projected to surpass the global average - 4.1% v. 3%. This growth is fuelled by a rapidly growing middle class, infrastructure investment, and digitalization. More than 460 million people are now online, and the region’s digital economy is expected to exceed US$330 billion by 2025 and potentially US$1 trillion by 2030.
SEA is charting a path for regional transformation, led by a new, diverse generation of builders and investors. This wave includes female entrepreneurs innovating across technology-enabled sectors, gender-diverse fund managers and investors cultivating inclusive and locally grounded investment theses. Together, this ecosystem can contribute to SEA’s economic rise and reshape the foundations of how value is created, distributed, and scaled across the region.
Fund Managers to Watch - to be updated!
Fund managers across Southeast Asia are increasingly seeing women’s health as a high growth market opportunity.
Women’s healthcare is a strategic investment theme for Recharge Capital, a VC with a firm belief in the sector’s tremendous growth potential. They bring together noteworthy partners such as Baylor College of Medicine, NUS Singapore Lab and Thomson Medical, to focus on in-vitro fertilization, tech and diagnostic companies. Portfolio companies include Elix, focused on women’s hormonal health, and GenPrime, offering fertility services throughout Southeast Asia.
Margaret Wang, Managing Partner at Recharge Capital
Singapore-based Verge Healthtech invests in innovations to make healthcare more accessible, better in quality, and more efficient, with an increasing focus on women’s health. Portfolio companies include Sooma, which offers at-home neuromodulation therapy for depression - ~50% more common in women than men - and chronic pain; and VitruvianMD, which offers AI-enabled medical diagnostics, including cervical cancer screenings that are faster and more accurate.
Scarlett Chen, Managing Partner at Verge
Healthcare is a focus sector for MDI Ventures, a strategic VC originally anchored by Telkom Indonesia. They have invested in SwipeRx, the largest network of pharmacies in Southeast Asia, connecting over 50,000 pharmacies on a single platform with access to information, education, medicines and products. Benefits to women customers of SwipeRx pharmacies include expanded contraceptive choice and improved access to blood glucose monitoring and diabetes referral.
Donald Wihardja, CEO of MDI Ventures
LP Pulse Check
As we track regional sentiment, we are eager to understand how LPs are positioning themselves in view of the current opportunities in Southeast Asia. Take the real-time poll and see how your peers are navigating this inflection point.
Take the real-time poll and see what your peers are doing.
The 2025 Investing in Women Award will celebrate institutional investors and family offices who play an outstanding role in supporting diverse fund managers. We will recognize LPs who invest in women-led or gender-balanced fund managers.
Awards will be announced 10 September 2025 at the DealStreetAsia PE-VC Summit
Meet the 2025 Investing in Women Awards Selection Committee
-
Angus Kathage
INVESTOR ENGAGMENT
Australia - DFAT -
Elaine Foo
FOUNDER & CEO
New Dimensions Capital -
Emily Chew
HEAD OF SUSTAINABILITY
GIC -
Haw Rer Au Yong
PARTNER
Pangaea Alternative Advisors -
Hemal Mirani
MANAGING DIRECTOR
HarbourVest Partners
Coming Soon…
GPCA is hosting the next Investor Training: Gender-Informed Decision Making as a Growth Strategy.
This in-person event will take a deep dive into the ways private capital can generate more value and growth when gender is integrated in investment strategies.
📅 19 August 2025 | 9 am - 5 pm,
followed by a Networking Reception
📍 Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, Singapore
Register now: https://hubs.la/Q03vzVBh0
We will be hosting an SEA LP Breakfast Roundtable at the DealstreetAsia PE-VC Summit
This closed-door event will bring together limited partners for a focused discussion to explore how private capital can play a catalytic role in driving more inclusive growth as well as emerging opportunities in the region.
📅 10 September 2025 | 8 am - 9 am
📍 Grand Copthorne Waterfront, Singapore
Register Now
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This publication has been funded by the Australian Government through the Investing in Women initiative. The views expressed in this publication are the author's alone and are not necessarily the views of the Australian Government.