Kasikorn Bank opens $30 million fintech war chest

A $30m Kbank Beacon Fund by Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank will be used to invest in five startups each year across South East Asia.

The KBank Beacon fund will aim to undertake up to five deals per year, with investments ranging from $500,00- to $3 million.

The bank also intends to reserve a portion for top-ups to the third party venture capital funds. To this end, it has already backed Dymon Asia, a fintech fund headquartered in Singapore which is aiming for a $50 million final close.

Becaon’s first startup investment is an undisclosed punt on Bangkok-based SME cloud accounting firm FlowAccount.

Apirat Vanchaam, senior visionary architect at the bank’s business technology subsidiary KBTG, says: “At first, people might think that startups will disrupt corporations, but now I think people are starting to see that that will not necessarily happen, people are starting to see that startups can partner with corporations.”