Global Gateway plans to raise up to $100 million

MANILA, Philippines - Global Gateway Venture Capital (G2VC), led by young venture capital specialists Winson Damarillo and Martin Lichauco plans to raise up to $50 million to $100 million to fund Filipino-owned technology startups.

In a briefing last week, Lichauco, managing partner at G2VC and who has more than 15 years of cross-border venture investing experience, said the company is in investment mode, with the aim of showcasing and marketing the next generation Philippine technology start-up firms seeking a foothold in the global arena.

Lichauco said the company has raised $10 million to date with four companies under its wings — Exist, Morphlabs, MaestroDev, and Infinite.ly. 

He said the company will continue to focus on companies with disruptive technologies in line with its goal to propel the Philippines as a hotspot for emerging technology. 

With over 150 employees working across multiple portfolio companies, G2VC also provides world-class talent and top notch technologies to companies around the world.

Among G2VC’s local investors include advisor Orlando “Doy” Vea (founder of Smart).

Exist is a wolrd-class software engineering firm that provides Java, Ruby on Rails, Open Source and technology expertise to Fortune 500 companies while MorphLabs pioneered cloud computing in the Philippines and has now expanded to the North America and Japan markets where it is now regarded as one of the top players. Its core technology — mCloud Series ran as finalist in the Best of Interop award, competing alongside tech giant IBM. 

Lichauco said no company in the Philippines carries the same technology nor has launched a product close to it.

In 2010, MorphLabs was likewise ranked finalist for the Most Innovative BPO Company of the year at the International ICT Awards. It also grabbed the REd Herring Asia Top 100 TEch Company award.

MeastroDev is a software tooling company, driving global open source projects with thousands of users while G2VC’s newest venture, Infinite.ly, provides a social media performance and monitoring solution.

Damarillo, founding partner of G2VC, has a good track record of building successful technology startups which he subsequently sold to major IT players. Among these include Gluecode Software, an open source application infrastructure company which was acquired by IBM in 2005, Logicblae, acquired by Iona Technologies in 2007, and most recently, Webtide, acquired by Intalio in 2009.

Prior to this, Damarillo was among the highest performing venture capital professionals at Intel, having led the majority of his investments to either a successful IPO or a profitable corporation acquisition.

Lichauco, on the other hand, was managing director at AO Capital, an investment and financial advisory serves firm covering the Asia Pacific region. Before joining AO Capital, Lichauco led the Southeast Asian investment activities in the software, semiconductor, IT-enabled serves and telecommunication industries of US/Asia cross border venture funds, Hambrecht & Quist Asia Pacific and Walden International.

At H&QAP, Lichauco was responsible for identifying early stage cross-border opportunities in the region including more than 20 investments in the Philippines.

Lichauco was recently appointed as managing director of Siemer & Associates LLC in Hongkong. Siermers is   a global boutique merchant bank that serves digital media, software and Internet companies with its investment banking professionals having successfully completed more than 50 transactions that aggregated over $3 billion in sell-side mandates and surpassed $1.5 billion in equity capital.

Siemer offers exceptional corporate capital raising, financial advisory services and M&A, specializing in cross-border transactions.

 “I look forward to working with such a dynamic team. We share the same approach in structuring transactions and have the same vision for the future of the industry, which will translate into one seamless financial operation,” Lichauco said.