As 2025 draws to a close, we reflect on a year that has been defined not just by resilience, but by continued evolution in how value is created in Southeast Asia. 

And how this value is created is multi-dimensional. Global brands scaling from the region, new opportunities in the agentic economy, and strengthening fundamentals continue to be key themes of growth across our portfolio. As we close 2025, we look back at some of the important developments in our portfolio along these themes, that you may have been a part of or witnessed as well. 

Category-Defining Fundamentals

When it comes to financial milestones and corporate fundamentals, we have seen several of our portfolio continue to hit key milestones and develop their thesis of building enduring companies:

1. Carro has continued to break its records with best-ever gross profit at S$149 million (12.4% margin) and best-ever revenues at S$1.2B (15% y/y), numbers shared as it announced a US$60 million round led by Cool Japan Fund (Japan’s SWF). 
2. Groww, one of our exited portfolio companies we backed in their seed round in 2017, marked a historic milestone with an IPO in November that saw the company market cap jump from US$7B to ~US$10B+.
3. Philippine digital bank Tonik’s lending portfolio has achieved more than 25% risk-adjusted return on capital with 15x portfolio growth in the last three years, marking continued development in the company’s thesis of sustainable consumer credit inclusion in the Philippines via digital banking. 

Building the Agentic Economy 

Companies developing tools, platforms, and user experiences for the future of the “Agentic Economy” have dominated new and follow-on investments in our portfolio. What started as hype two years ago around LLMs and GPT wrapper applications has since evolved into more targeted, verticalized, and economical value-driven AI tooling and platforms.

1. Surfin’s momentum building the future of agentic finance for emerging market economies was accelerated this year with a US$26.5 million round led by Woori Venture Partners, Washington University in St. Louis and Phillip Private Equity, following our initial round with the company.
2. We co-led fileAI’s US$14 million Series A earlier this February. The rest of the year saw the AI native data preparation platform launch public access, API integration, and first-of-its-kind MCP server, crossing more than billion files processed, and making significant headway into the US market. 
3. Conversational AI pioneer WIZ.AI raised a Series B round led by SMBC Asia Rising Fund, the corporate venture capital arm of Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC).
4. Over the past year, we have welcomed to our portfolio platforms redefining workflows with agentic AI, like Gani.ai for legal and compliance needs and Diaflow for all around business productivity needs. 
5. Pollen’s AI agents for surplus inventory liquidation were put in the spotlight as the company won an Impact Enterprise Excellence Award (SME) at this year’s Sustainability Impact Awards by The Business Times and UOB.
6. Several of our companies have also launched AI tooling this year to create more effective user experiences, from Intellect Atlas (mental healthcare) to Finmo’s MO AI (treasury management).

Era of Southeast Asia’s Global Fintechs

It’s not enough for fintechs from Southeast Asia to win in the region. The world is their playing field and several of our fintech portfolio have made significant headway in this regard, scaling inherently cross-border products, securing key licenses across several markets, and raising fresh rounds of capital.

1. Fazz’s stablecoin rails company StraitsX had a momentous 2025, as it refresh its brand to target the global market, launched virtual accounts in partnership with DBS and Standard Chartered, stablecoin listings on Coinbase, Binance, and Ripple, and a US$10 million round with UQ Pay and NTT Docomo.
2. Interconnected treasury intelligence platform Finmo secured a US$18.5 Series A earlier in February, followed by a year marked by expanded money movement capabilities globally and new licenses in markets like the UK.
3. Flip Globe, the cross-border product of Indonesian fintech Flip has quietly grown 3x in the last two years through use cases like healthcare payments in Malaysia. 
4. All-in-one finance OS for business Aspire wrapped up 2025 with new licenses enabling expansion into Australia, the EU, and the US.

Brands Making New Rules

The brands that last are the ones that break the rules, including their own. 2025 has seen several of our portfolio redefine themselves and enter new terrain, all in the spirit of staying true to their mission of shaping their respective industries. 

1. Carro has not only broken its revenue and gross profit records, but has continued to redefine itself with its entry into new car sales through a partnership with EV maker Zeekr, as well as expansion beyond Southeast Asia, with the opening of its flagship store in Hong Kong this past year.
2. Intellect has gone beyond telehealth platform or even employee well being provider to become Intellect 3.0, encompassing a wider range of care pathways from integration into physical treatment to organizational needs and specialized care, 
3. We led a round into smoked beef rice bowl brand Se’Indonesia as they break the rules of what it means to sell beef with their US$1 pricing, expanding their dine-in options and looking at regional expansion.
4. Konvy has continued to make headway in becoming more than just Thailand’s leading beauty ecommerce platform, now with 12 physical stores in the market and continued expansion into the Philippines.

Beyond Southeast Asia: How these themes have shaped our work at Insignia Ventures Partners

Knowing the direction (global) and speed (quality revenues) of our portfolio’s growth momentum has been fundamental to shaping the evolution of how we work with founders. This has included more exposure to markets beyond Southeast Asia, including hundreds of programmatic introductions to Japan corporates and institutions (resulting, for example, in five of our companies being a part of the Tokyo Stock Exchange Asia Startup hub) as well as collaborations with platforms like NYSE TV to feature our portfolio.

We also recognize the importance of connecting the best global talent to support our portfolio and expose us to more companies building with this momentum. Over the past year, our education arm Insignia Ventures Academy has developed new modules for innovation scaling and commercialization through our StartCXO program and has now graduated 250+ fellows across nine cohorts with our tenth coming up next March (sign up here). Get in touch with Paulo to learn more about delivering these modules to your organizations in curated programming. 

Looking Ahead: Southeast Asia’s Next US$100B+ Public Outcomes

This 2025, Singapore has seen two public companies join the US$100B+ club: DBS and Sea Group. In our journey to build the region’s next market leaders of this scale and longevity, we have been called this past year to think and act bigger. We have laid the groundwork for significant developments in the coming year to evolve as well as a firm and look forward to sharing more. In the meantime, stay tuned to our newsletter, our LinkedIn and Insignia Press, for more news and resources. 

Technology may evolve. The markets may change. But we continue to build great companies and work with unstoppable founders.