Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank has launched a $30 million fintech fund to invest in startups across South East Asia as well as Europe and China. The KBank Beacon fund aims to undertake up to five deals per year, with investments ranging from $500,000 to $3 million, according to a release.
“At first, people might think that startups will disrupt corporations, but now I think people are starting to see that that will not necessarily happen, people are starting to see that startups can partner with corporations,” commented KBTG Senior Visionary Architect Apirat Vanchaam.
Beacon’s first startup investment is an undisclosed amount on Bangkok-based SME cloud accounting firm FlowAccount. The bank also intends to reserve a portion for “top-ups” to third party venture capital funds, having already backed Dymon Asia, a Singapore-headquarterd fintech fund aiming for a $50M final close.
Last year Thailand opened a fintech regulatory sandbox, with the central bank set to invite firms to participate in 2017. The sandbox aims to enable developers working on lending, payment and money-transfer services and products to experiment for up to a year.
