Bintang Capital Partners Berhad (“Bintang” or the “Firm”) announced its second investment under its maiden fund, BCP Asia Fund I L.P., into Involve Asia Technologies Sdn. Bhd. (“Involve Asia” or the “Company”) to support the Company’s expansion across Southeast Asia and Australasia, as well as the development of a new product suite to cater to its customers’ increasing digital marketing needs.
Involve Asia is a Malaysian-based marketing technology company that operates a performance-based marketing technology platform, providing a single platform to help brands market digitally through advertising attribution, partner workflow management, and creative distribution. Involve Asia partners with content creators, influencers, developers, and affiliate partners worldwide. The platform tracks and manages returns on these digital marketing partnerships for global brands. The Company operates in 6 countries, catering to over 500 brands and over 4,000 offers with more than 400,000 affiliate partners on its platform, driving over USD1.5 billion in transactions since its inception in 2014.
The USD10 million investment round was led by Bintang, and supported by co-investors Orbit Capital Malaysia, 500 Global, and Monumental Productions. Fundraising proceeds will be utilised to fuel the Company’s recent expansion into Vietnam and the Philippines, as well as to continue cementing its footprint across Southeast Asia and Australasia. Involve Asia also plans to put part of the proceeds to use in catalysing its in-house development of a new product suite. This intends to meet the demands and needs of clients with a solution to track and attribute their business in the global online commerce industry. Amongst these include creating an in-house business intelligence team to provide its stakeholders with detailed insights into consumer purchasing patterns and developing a novel content management system for its marketing partners to manage their multi-channel promotions on a single platform.
Bintang’s investment into growing the Company’s burgeoning Southeast Asian presence underscores the Firm’s belief that the long-term prospects in Southeast Asia continue to outweigh growing uncertainty and global headwinds. A growing working population and expanding upper-middle class underline the strong demographic trends that fortifies Southeast Asia’s position as an appealing consumer market and attractive investment destination.
The investment in the Company was driven by the extraordinary shift in Southeast Asian consumer behaviour towards digital consumption, with more than 80% of Southeast Asian consumers expected to have transacted online by the end of 2022. Bintang believes that the increasing internet and mobile penetration in Southeast Asia would also provide significant long-term opportunities for value creation on a regional scale.
“Bintang believes that Involve Asia is well-positioned within Southeast Asia’s fast-growing and rapidly transforming digital marketing and digital commerce space. Its’ highly innovative business model also has great potential to catalyse positive social impact by providing opportunities for individuals and small-to-medium-sized marketing companies to harness their networks by partnering with global brands,” said Bintang’s Founder, Johan Rozali-Wathooth. With that, Johan adds, “Bintang believes that this can create new jobs and provide economic uplift opportunities for individuals in the process. These aspirations are very much aligned to Bintang’s philosophy of ‘Investing in Impact and Innovation.'”
Jimmy How, CEO of Involve Asia shared, “The team is thrilled to join forces with Bintang, Orbit Capital Malaysia, and Monumental Productions, and fortifying our partnership with 500 Global further. These partnerships and their long-term backing allows us to continue growing our platform to better serve brands, publishers, and affiliates, as well as to double down on growth.” He adds, “After closing 2022 with a record revenue of RM90 million, we’re confident this momentum will make 2023 a really significant year for Involve.”
About Bintang
Bintang is the private equity arm of AHAM Asset Management Berhad (“AHAM”), a leading independent Malaysian asset management group. Bintang further benefits from a parentage that includes leading global investment managers including CVC Capital Partners and Nikko Asset Management.
Bintang focuses on deploying capital into fast-growing mid-sized ASEAN companies with proven track records: we back visionary entrepreneurs who are aligned to Bintang’s twin core investment philosophies of Innovation and Impact. Bintang is a signatory to the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investing (“UN PRI”). The Firm is also the first Malaysian signatory to the Operating Principles for Impact Management (“the Impact Principles”), an initiative whose development was led by the International Finance Corporation (“IFC”), a member of the World Bank Group.
The Firm’s maiden fund, BCP Asia Fund I (“BCPAF I”) is anchored by Dana Penjana Nasional, an investment fund under the Malaysian Government’s Ministry of Finance aimed at catalysing the country’s post Covid-19 economic recovery whilst supporting the local private capital industry.
BCPAF I invests in high performance, high impact and high innovation companies who are well-placed to meet the challenges, opportunities and disruption brought about by rapid advancements in technology, as well as who are committed towards delivering impact from environmental, community, employee, customer and governance perspectives.
Further information about Bintang is available at www.bintangcapitalpartners.com.
About Involve Asia
Involve Asia is a global marketing technology company that provides a platform for advertisers to measure, manage and scale their marketing partnerships by automating workflows and providing attribution to marketing campaigns. Using its proprietary cookie-less tracking technology for highly accurate, future-proofed digital marketing.
Involve has tracked over USD1.5 billion in transactions for multinationals such as Lazada, Shopee, Grab, Marriott, Malaysia Airlines, Air Asia, Nike, Citibank and over 500 customers across E-commerce, Travel, Finance and Services sectors.
Founded in 2014, Involve Asia has been backed by major venture capital firms such as 500 Global, OSK Technology Ventures, and Cradle Seed Ventures and has an established presence across Asia with offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
