How do I raise a VC fund in Asia-Pacific?

Australia, from the programme's own published terms

The Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership programme is described by the Australian government as helping fund managers attract pooled capital so they can raise new venture capital funds to invest in innovative early stage businesses. What follows is its published conditions rather than a summary of the market.

• Fund size. The published range is between 10 million and 200 million Australian dollars in committed capital, with conditional registration possible below that range. The government has announced an increase in the maximum fund size to 270 million Australian dollars effective 1 July 2027.
• Establishment and residency. The partnership must be new rather than restructured, established in Australia or in a country with a double tax agreement with Australia, and the general partner must be resident in Australia or in such a country.
• What it may invest in. Early-stage investments at pre-seed, seed, startup, and early expansion stages, with investments required to be held for a minimum of twelve months and to meet additional criteria. The investee asset size cap is published as increasing to 80 million Australian dollars from 1 July 2027.
• Investor treatment. Investors are described as exempt from tax on their share of income and gains from eligible early stage venture capital investments, with a non-refundable carry-forward tax offset of up to ten percent.
• Manager treatment. General partners can claim carried interest on the capital account rather than the revenue account.
• The process. Applications go to the responsible department by email, and the published timing is that the committee sits every five weeks and will consider an application within sixty days, extendable to a maximum of 120 days.

India, from the regulator's own published guidance

The Securities and Exchange Board of India's published guidance on the Alternative Investment Funds Regulations sets out the following. Each item is quoted from that guidance and each cites the regulation it rests on within that document.

• The categories. An applicant may seek registration in one of three categories. Category I includes venture capital funds, including angel funds, alongside small and medium enterprise funds, social venture funds, and infrastructure funds.
• What Category I means. Funds that invest in start-up or early stage ventures, social ventures, small and medium enterprises, infrastructure, or other sectors or areas which the government or regulators consider socially or economically desirable.
• Form. A fund may be established or incorporated as a trust, a company, a limited liability partnership, or a body corporate, and the guidance notes that most funds registered with the regulator are in trust form.
• Investor numbers. No scheme of a fund other than an angel fund may have more than 1,000 investors.
• Minimum investment. A fund other than an angel fund may not accept an investment of less than one crore rupees from an investor, reduced to twenty-five lakh rupees for employees or directors of the fund or of its manager.
• Continuing interest. The manager or sponsor must hold a continuing interest, which may not be through the waiver of management fees. For Category I and II funds that interest must be not less than two and a half percent of the corpus or five crore rupees, whichever is lesser.
• Structure and tenure. Category I and II funds must be close-ended with a minimum tenure of three years, and the tenure of a scheme is calculated from the date of its final closing.
• Offering. Funds are privately placed and may not invite the public to subscribe to their securities.

Singapore, and why this page does not describe it

Singapore operates a distinct regime for venture capital fund managers, and it is frequently the first jurisdiction a manager raising across Asia-Pacific asks about. This page does not describe it, and the reason is worth stating plainly: three separate pages on the Monetary Authority of Singapore's own site were attempted while this page was researched, and all three returned the Authority's service-unavailable message rather than any content.

A licensing regime is exactly the kind of subject where a page written from memory does damage, since a manager could rely on a condition that has changed. The instruction is therefore to read the Authority's current published criteria directly, or to have counsel do so, before treating Singapore as a route.

The same discipline applies to Japan, Hong Kong, and the Southeast Asian markets, none of which was verified for this page and none of which is characterised here.

The questions that decide the rest of the region

Whatever market you start in, these are the variables that change the answer, and each has a jurisdiction-specific response.

• Whether a local fund vehicle or manager registration is required to operate or to market there.
• Which local investors may lawfully commit to a fund of your type, since domestic institutional constraints often decide this before your quality does.
• Whether a government programme, sovereign investor, or public fund-of-funds participates in your category, and on what published terms.
• Currency, including what companies earn in, what the fund is denominated in, and whether proceeds can be moved.
• Cross-border marketing rules, since approaching investors in one market from another engages that market's rules. Blueprint's page on marketing a fund publicly covers the general shape.
• Structure and domicile, which in this region frequently produce a pair of vehicles rather than one. Blueprint's pages on structure and domicile cover the machinery.
• Regional development capital, including the institutions Blueprint profiles individually, whose participation carries obligations as well as capital.

What limited partners are testing

The regional tests are about coherence between the structure, the strategy, and the investor base.

• Does the fund's structure qualify for the treatment the manager is claiming?
• Is the strategy genuinely regional, or a single-market strategy described broadly?
• Does the manager know which markets they may market into, and after what filing?
• Is the currency exposure described and reported separately from performance?
• Are the local relationships real, meaning sourcing and support rather than an office?
• Does the documentation meet the standard an institutional investor expects anywhere, which is what ILPA's emerging manager toolkit assembles as a starting point for the fund formation process?

What this page does not cover

It describes two markets from their own published rules and names the others as unverified. It states no fund regime, licensing condition, programme term, or eligibility rule for Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, or the Southeast Asian markets, because none of those was read when this page was written.

It also states no market figure for fundraising or activity anywhere in the region, and no ticket size or process for any sovereign or institutional investor.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. Fund regimes, registration, programme eligibility, and marketing permissions should be settled with counsel in each jurisdiction, and every programme condition should be read in its current published form rather than from this page.