Iris Capital Partners' Iris Fund offers startups more autonomy over their capital sources

Iris Capital Partners is a pioneer venture debt firm in Malaysia that provides alternative financing options for growth stage startups in Southeast Asia.

The recently launched Malaysia’s first privately led venture debt fund, the Iris Fund, under the Dana Penjana Nasional (DPN) programme, is to provide venture debt financing for high-impact technology companies and to empower local startups to scale beyond the Malaysian market and support Asian companies to expand into the Malaysian market.

The pioneer fund is co-managed by Hanwha Asset Management Co., making this the group’s maiden venture debt partnership in Malaysia. The size of the fund will be RM160 million and capital was contributed from Penjana Kapital and a host of institutional and high net worth investors.

Dato’ Wan Kamaruzaman, Chairman of the Iris Fund, explains their involvement in the DPN programmes and also talks about:

the founding of Iris Capital Partners
the key difference between venture debt and venture capital and how venture debt fund benefits startups
the investment focus and the types of companies to invest
the pipeline for the company this year

Meanwhile, Kimo Kim, Partner at the Iris Fund, shares more details about Hanwha Asset Management Co. venture debt partnership in Malaysia, and also talks about:

the mechanism for investment, how it works and the financial terms in relation to repayment, interest rates and so forth
their investment in Growthwell Group out of Singapore