Angel Forum Puts New Zealand on the Asian Investment Stage

Date added: Monday, 15 March 2010 09:13

The New Zealand angel investor network took a giant step north this past week, as Kiwi angel investors, incubators and related economic development offices attended the Asia Business Angel Forum (ABAF), held in Singapore March 8-9. Created and put on by the Business Angel Network South East Asia or BANSEA, ABAF attracted angels and others from India, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and the US. The resulting exchange of investment trends, best practices, case studies and opportunities to collaborate has raised expectations about prospects for Kiwi early-stage companies and investors seeing fast-growing Asian markets as their first foray abroad.

"The objective was to connect and begin a dialogue with like-minded investors across the Asian and Australasian region," said Hamilton. "While the prospect of joint investment is still off in the future, we established a solid basis from which that can be possible. For now, it's about getting to know each other's interests, strengths and investment environments."

Unlike venture capital or private equity funds, angel investors make investments entirely with their own funds, and typically get actively involved with some aspect of the company, often in the area of business development and networking with customers, partners and future investors. New Zealand angels have been very active over the past year, despite the impact of the US financial crisis on the broader world economy. In fact, as visiting experts such as Bill Payne of the Kaufman Institute (currently an executive in residence at the ICE House in Auckland) relate, an economic down turn is the best time to angel invest, as the cream of start up businesses rises to the crop and angels' investment dollars can enable companies to further than during boom times, when prices rise and labour availability falls. Kiwi angels have seized the recent opportunity, investing a record number of angel dollars across the country.

Not wishing to be a mere talkfest, ABAF also attracted fifteen companies pitching for angel investment from the region, across a broad variety of sectors. New Zealand was represented by Wellington-based supercomputing company InterGrid. An additional ten companies demonstrated their wares via a mini trade show.

Another outcome of this first ABAF was a formalized commitment to work on a pan-Asian angel network with participation from New Zealand and Australia. This follows on a memorandum of understanding put in place by BANSEA and the NZ Angel Association last November. NZ Angel Association chair Andy Hamilton (also a speaker at ABAF) will represent New Zealand.

Provided by Joe Rouse who is the ICE House Executive in Residence for South East Asia and BANSEA board member. He is based in Singapore