Sistema Asia Fund

Sistema's venture fund, which invests in high-tech companies in India and Southeast Asia.

date of
foundation

2015 year

Sistema's
stake

83percent

the fund's
target size

120 млн $

target
returns

3х cash-on-cash

Development Strategy

Sistema Asia Fund (SAF) was founded in 2015 and invests in companies at various growth stages in the markets of India and Southeast Asia.

Investment criteria:

A proven business model and/or loyal audience;
Solutions specific to the Indian market;
Startup founders heavily involved in business management;
Co-investors.

In March 2019, SAF completed its first monetisation by selling a stake in Qwikcilver, an Indian end-to-end service provider of gift card and prepaid solutions. Qwikcilver was the first Indian company to develop gift cards in India, becoming an undisputed market leader. As of March 2019, the company produced about 250 mln gift cards a year in 16 countries for 15,000 online platforms and mobile applications. Sistema Asia Fund invested in Qwikcilver in 2016 and exited three years later with solid returns on the invested capital.

In July 2019, SAF took part in the Series C funding round of Uniphore, an Indian AI-based speech recognition startup. Uniphore raised the total of USD 50 mln in the round that was led by March Capital Partners and joined by Chiratae Ventures, CXO Fund and other funds.

In 2019, SAF conducted eight additional rounds of funding for its existing portfolio assets.

Investment stages

Growth stage

Mid-stage

Investment focus

High-tech companies operating in the sector of technology products and services and other types of businesses and consumer brands that use technologies as their key competitive advantage:

Consumer tech (e-commerce, healthcare, transport, media, finance and education) and Enterprise tech (IoT);
VR/AR;
Big data;
Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML).

The team

Vsevolod Rozanov

Chairman of the Investment Committee

Andrey Terebenin

Managing Partner

Fund Description

Seclore

A developer of an EDRM (Enterprise Digital Rights Management) system that enables corporations to control use of files within and outside the company.

Seclore – a developer of an EDRM (Enterprise Digital Rights Management) system that enables corporations to control use of files within and outside the company. It has more than 5m users from 600 companies in 29 countries. Advanced and reliable EDRM solutions and innovations related to access to protected documents via browsers gained Seclore an award for successful growth from Frost & Sullivan, got it included in the top 50 fast-growing tech companies according to Deloitte and brought it the Cool Vendor title from Gartner. The company has representative offices in the United States, India, the Netherlands, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

Investment in February 2016.

Lendingkart

A company that fundamentally changes the traditional lending, using its own data-based lending mechanism to provide loans to small and medium-sized businesses.

A company that fundamentally changes the traditional lending, using its own data-based lending mechanism to provide loans to small and medium-sized businesses. In order to attract customers and repay loans, the company uses a model with a small headcount and has already provided loans to customers in 600 cities and towns.

Investment in August 2017.

HealthifyMe

India's biggest digital fitness platform (4m users and over 200 sports instructors and nutritionists) that allows controlling consumed calories, setting personal fitness goals and monitoring progress. The effectiveness is achieved through access to online consultations of nutritionists and instructors. At the end of 2017, the company launched a new service, Ria, which is the world's first virtual AI-based nutritionist. The biggest corporate customers are P&G, Unilever, Accenture, Cognizant, Shell, and Philips.

Investment in February 2018.

Kissht

Kissht – an online consumer lending platform based on a proprietary algorithm for assessing creditworthiness with AI elements.

Kissht – an online consumer lending platform based on a proprietary algorithm for assessing creditworthiness with AI elements.

Investment in September 2018.

Licious

A complex brand selling meat and meat products in the market where over 90 % of players are non-chain retail stores with poor quality and low sanitary standards.

A complex brand selling meat and meat products in the market where over 90 % of players are non-chain retail stores with poor quality and low sanitary standards. The company manages the entire value creation chain, from supply to processing and delivery to customers, using uninterrupted cold chain.

Investment in March 2017.

Mobikon

A marketing platform for restaurants to attract customers.

A marketing platform for restaurants to attract customers. Restaurants receive tools for managing customer loyalty by monitoring their profiles and transactions on various digital platforms and in payment systems. The built-in database includes 8.5m profiles from all over the world.

Investment in August 2017.

Rebel Foods

India's biggest “food on demand” company using the cloud kitchen technology.

The company, commonly known for its larger brands – Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Oven story and Mandarin Oak – is disrupting the food delivery business by building and running the largest chain of internet restaurants, globally. It is the world's biggest company operating in this format.

Investment in August 2018.

Uniphore

Indian AI-based speech recognition startup.

Chennai-based speech recognition company Uniphore was founded in 2008 and aims to bridge the communication gap between man and machine using voice and speech. The company develops and sells software solutions for conversational analytics, conversational assistance and conversational security. Uniphore products are used by more than 4 mln people in 80 companies globally. The company has offices in the USA, India and Singapore. The headcount is more than 150 people.

Investment in July 2019.