After a couple of years of spectacular growth, tech start-ups and tech giants alike are now facing a less optimistic outlook. During the third quarter of 2022, venture capital investments and deals globally fell to levels not seen since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. This slowdown in investment is hitting North America and Europe particularly hard – but Asia is being affected too.
Trends across Asean exhibit, to some extent, a similar evolution – a fast acceleration of deals and investments in the lead-up to 2022,inevitably accompanied by layoffs by many tech giants. According to the Asean Investment Report 2022, VC investments continued to grow from the mid-2010s, to reach more than US$66 billion in mid-2022. VC investment in the region rose by a factor of 2.6 between 2015 and 2020, outperforming both China and India.
Global conditions are currently far from ideal for investors and early-stage entrepreneurs, and the global economic outlook remains extremely volatile and very difficult to predict for the medium to long term. But there is no reason to be overly pessimistic when looking at Asean. A vast majority of leading Asean venture capital firms and funds are headquartered in Singapore, but there is an opportunity for an expansion of activities in other Asean countries. Policies to support the emergence and consolidation of innovation ecosystems both in individual Asean member states and on a regional level could significantly accelerate this process.