10 exits in 18 months. Here's what that looks like at a seed fund.
By Craig Dixon, Co-Founder and General Partner, Accelerating Asia Ventures
The world is moving faster than ever. Geopolitical shifts, new technologies, and market corrections are stacking on top of each other on what feels like a weekly basis. Do we need to make weekly (or daily, or hourly) strategy iterations to stay relevant? For a venture investor working on a five-year-plus timeline to exit, the real question is how we build a successful forward-looking strategy when the ground keeps shifting underneath us.
Over the next eighteen months, Accelerating Asia Ventures expects exit opportunities in at least ten of our portfolio companies. Most will return more than 10x. A handful will clear 20x. One to three will clear 30x. Both Fund 1 and Fund 2 currently sit in the top 5% of VC funds globally against the most recent Carta benchmarks*, with our portfolio MOIC and expected DPI tracking the trajectory the model is built to produce.
Can we actually sustain this kind of performance against the backdrop I just described? I believe we can, and it comes down to two structural advantages in how AAV is built. First, our returns are not reliant on the vagaries of the public markets. Second, our model produces higher MOIC per dollar of LP capital because of how the portfolio is constructed and where we enter. The rest of this piece is what those two advantages look like in practice.
We're not reliant on public markets
A lot of the concern in the market right now is perfectly valid. Public-market windows are narrow. Secondary transactions and strategic M&A are carrying most of the liquidity in the region. Funds that entered at billion-dollar valuations and need a public-market mark to return capital have genuinely hard work ahead of them.
We're not in that position.
We enter at seed, typically as the first institutional cheque into a company, often at valuations in the low single millions. By the time one of our companies is raising a Series A or Series B, the round itself is already an exit-level event for our original position. We don't wait for an IPO window to exit, because we don't need one. A seed fund that enters at low-single-million valuations and holds through to a Series B at $100M+ is already looking at 30 to 60x on its initial position, before anyone goes public and before any M&A closes.
None of this means we're indifferent to how public markets are doing. Efficient public markets matter to us, because they drive the downstream VC demand that funds the Series A and B rounds we exit into. We want those markets functioning. We just don't need a specific window to open for our returns to land.
That is the model. It is why the eighteen-month outlook holds up.
Why our model produces higher MOIC per dollar of LP capital
Four structural reasons. Each is a feature of how AAV is built.
For our LPs, our accelerator is a source of additional equity at no extra cash cost. Every company that joins the accelerator receives real operational support, such as mentorship, network, and help raising their next round. They are also put through a curriculum built around the fundamentals of business building: Product/Market fit through identifying ICP, understanding the specific and measurable problem, and matching the solution to that. We filter for this potential at intake and mentor founders to prioritize focus on this scaling pathway effectively. Founders pay for that, but not in cash. They pay in 1% equity in their business, on top of whatever equity we buy with our direct investment. The practical effect is that AAV ends up owning, say, 4% of a company where our direct investment alone might buy 3%. Compounded across a hundred companies, that extra 1% materially lifts MOIC for an AAV LP. This is the single clearest structural advantage of our model, and it is what LPs are really buying when they come into an AAV fund.
We are usually the first institutional cheque. At the very early revenue-generating stage in the markets where we operate, there are still relatively few sophisticated investors. AAV is usually the first institutional cheque into a startup, which means we set the entry valuation. We are not paying up to follow someone else in.
Portfolio construction is built for the power law, not concentration. A hundred companies across 13 cohorts and 16 markets. This ensures that AAV is well diversified by geography and business model, and unlikely to be over-exposed to any one specific market incident, while still taking plenty of shots on goal for the outliers to actually show up. I have written about this elsewhere. The math of venture is unforgiving at small portfolio sizes, and only becomes reliable at the size we operate at.
In emerging markets, AI is a supercharger for real problems, not a feature layer on superficial ones. A lot of the capital flowing into AI right now is going into pure-AI businesses at valuations that assume the technology itself is the product. That's one way to build, and it's working for some investors. The more durable value creation, in our view, is happening one layer below: in the businesses that use AI to leverage existing advantages like distribution networks, operational moats, customer relationships, and regulatory position. The problems our portfolio companies are solving, such as moving goods across Indonesian and Filipino archipelagos, delivering healthcare to underserved communities, or extending credit to the previously unbanked, are infrastructure-level problems, not coffee-delivery apps. When AI is integrated into businesses like these, the lift is structural and compounds over time, not cosmetic. A generation ago, emerging markets skipped desktop computing and went mobile-first. AI does something similar for the current wave of companies in our markets, and our portfolio is sitting right on top of it.
Examples of the model in practice
To be clear: this isn't an exit list. It's a snapshot of how the seed-stage model produces the math above, drawn from our top performers across both funds.
TransTRACK (Indonesia). We wrote our first cheque into TransTRACK in 2021 through Cohort 4, when the company was an early-stage AI-for-logistics business serving Indonesian fleet operators. Since then, they have raised from Eurazeo and AppWorks, built a team of several hundred, and established themselves as the category leader in fleet intelligence across their market. TransTRACK is one of the clearest examples in our portfolio of what "first institutional investor in an underserved market" looks like when it plays out over several years.
iFarmer (Bangladesh). Just closed a $1.5M round and moving into the next phase of scale. iFarmer has built one of the more thoughtful agritech models in South Asia (smallholder farmers, embedded finance, direct offtake) and is now executing on the distribution layer at scale. Another company where AAV wrote the first institutional cheque, and where subsequent rounds have drawn in serious institutional names.
Pulse Tech (Bangladesh). The Fund 2 version of the same story. We wrote the first institutional cheque in late 2024 into a healthtech business in a market that remains structurally underserved by growth capital. Subsequent investors include Iterative VC and Ascend Vietnam Ventures. Pulse Tech is already operating at meaningful scale and is well into closing their latest round.
Giftpack (global). A reminder that "Accelerating Asia" describes where we find and back founders, not the ceiling of where they can build. Giftpack has quietly built a global corporate gifting platform, with a factory-partner network spanning most countries in the world.
Drive Lah (Singapore). In Fund 1, Cohort 4, and a pointer toward a different kind of exit pathway entirely. Their most recent round was led by ComfortDelGro, the listed Singaporean transport operator. Strategic corporates don't lead rounds for fun. This is what the strategic M&A pathway looks like when it is building in the background over time.
We will be going deeper on several of these companies and more in coming weeks.
The foundations of our business remain robust. We will continue to iterate and improve on how we do it, such as integrating AI into our own operations, sharpening our data infrastructure, and improving what we offer founders at every step. But the fundamental truth of the business doesn't change. Entrepreneurs will still need financing, mentorship, and access to networks to reach their potential, and at the seed stage in the markets where we operate, those ingredients are still harder to come by than almost anywhere else in the world. AAV will be there to connect the dots and be the best partner for founders in scaling up their businesses.
See the portfolio. Check out acceleratingasia.com/portfolio. Filter by country, sector, or fundraising status. Request an introduction directly to any CEO.
For investors and partners. Choose your path at acceleratingasia.com/investors. Whether you're looking to co-invest in individual startups or invest in the fund, the next step is there.
* Carta Q4 2025 VC Fund Performance. US benchmarks used as Asian fund comparables remain limited.
About Accelerating Asia Ventures
Accelerating Asia Ventures is an independent accelerator and venture capital fund investing in early-stage startups across Southeast and South Asia. Founded by operators, the organisation is committed to supporting founders with capital, credibility, and a long-term community.
For interviews, data requests, or portfolio introductions, contact: team@acceleratingasia.com
