Technology

You've probably heard the news by now: Google is killing off Inbox, its experimental email app that's lived alongside Gmail for the past four years. The service is set to shut down for good this coming March.

When Inbox was announced in October of 2014, Google described it as something "years in the making" — a "completely different type of inbox, designed to focus on what really matters." The engineers behind it said it was "designed for the problems we're going to see in the next 10 years."

SingaporeGolden Gate Ventures has announced the close of its newest (and third) fund for Southeast Asia at a total of $100 million.

The fund hit a first close in the summer, as TechCrunch reported at the time, and now it has reached full capacity. Seven-year-old Golden Gate said its LPs include existing backers Singapore sovereign fundTemasek, KoreaHanwha, Naver — the owner of messaging app Line — and EE Capital. Investors backing the firm for the first time through this fund includeMistletoe — the fund from Taizo Son, brother of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son —Mitsui Fudosan, IDO Investments, CTBC Group, Korea Venture Investment Corporation (KVIC), and Ion Pacific.

Golden Gate was founded by former Silicon Valley-based trio Vinnie Lauria, Jeffrey Paine and Paul Bragiel . It has investments across five markets in Southeast Asia — with a particular focus on Indonesia and Singapore — and that portfolio includes SingaporeCarousell, automotive marketplace Carro, P2P lending startup Funding Societies, payment enabler Omise and health tech startupAlodokter.Golden Gateprevious fund was $60 millionand it closed in 2016.

Some of the firmexits so far includethe sale of Redmart to Lazada(although not a blockbuster),Pricelineacquisition of Woomoo,Lineacquisition of Temanjalanandthe sale ofMapan (formerly Ruma) to Go-Jek. It claims that its first two funds havehad distributions of cash (DPI) of1.56x and 0.13x, and IRRs of 48 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

&When I compare the tech ecosystem of Southeast Asia (SEA) to other markets, itreallyhit an inflection point — annual investment is now measured in the billions. That puts SEA ona global stage with the US, China, and India. Yet there is a youthfulness that reminds me ofSilicon Valley circa 2005, shortly before social media and the iPhone took off,& Lauria said in a statement.

A report from Google and Temasek forecasts that Southeast Asiadigital economy will grow from $50 billion in 2017 to over $200 billion by 2025 as internet penetration continues to grow across the region thanks to increased ownership of smartphones. That opportunity to reach a cumulative population of over 600 million consumers — more of whom are online today than the entire U.S. population — is feeding optimism around startups and tech companies.

Golden Gate isn&t alone in developing a fund to explore those possibilities, thereplenty of VC activity in the region.

Some of those includeOpenspace, which wasformerly known as NSI Venturesandjust closed a $135 million fund,Qualgro, which is raising a $100 million vehicleand Golden Equator, which paired up with Korea Investment Partners on a joint $88 million fund.Temasek-affiliated Vertex closed a $210 million fundlast year and that remains a record for Southeast Asia.

Golden Gate also has a dedicated crypto fund, LuneX, which is in the process of raising $10 million.