Inbound vs Outbound Investing in VC: TNB Aura’s Approach Explained

Southeast Asia continues to be one of the most desirable regions for global investment, underpinned by strong macroeconomic fundamentals, a rising digital economy, and a growing middle class. While capital inflows have tempered in the past 18 months, the region’s fundamentals remain resilient, and its long-term trajectory continues to draw interest from global and regional investors.

But venture capital isn’t just about spotting the right opportunities; it’s about how those opportunities are sourced. In today’s climate of quieter deal flow, the real differentiator lies in taking a deliberate, outbound approach grounded in research and conviction.

In Southeast Asia, deal sourcing strategies tend to differ depending on the stage of the investment. While early-stage investments may rely heavily on direct networks, founder referrals, or curated accelerator programmes, later-stage deals might emerge through structured processes, co-investment discussions, or targeted outreach. Across the board, however, VCs in the region lean on a differentiated mix of founder access, reputation, and thematic research to maintain a high-quality and high-relevance deal flow.

Unlike developed markets such as the United States, where VCs often cast a wide net across frontier or deep-tech sectors, investors in Southeast Asia have the advantage of learning from precedents. The region shares demographic similarities with India and China, and that gives rise to an investment approach grounded in pattern recognition: what has scaled, what business models have been proven, and how these can be adapted to local nuances.

At TNB Aura, we take a high-conviction, outbound-led approach. Rather than waiting for deals to arrive, we identify specific themes we believe are poised for regional impact, then go out and proactively source the most promising companies aligned with those themes. This is not just about thesis-driven investing; it’s about building proprietary pipelines based on deep research, cross-market insights, and structured playbooks.
In a region as fragmented and dynamic as Southeast Asia, outbound investing (done with intentionality and focus) is not just a strategy. It’s a necessity.

Southeast Asia’s Unicorns: Learning from China and India

To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, we can compare Southeast Asia’s unicorns with successful business models from China and India. The table below highlights some of the top Southeast Asia (SEA) unicorns and parallels or precedents in India and China for comparison:

This table shows strong sector parallels: SEA’s ride-hailing apps resemble India’s Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, and China’s Didi or Meituan. E-commerce platforms like Lazada and Tokopedia align with Flipkart and Alibaba/JD.com precedents. Gaming and tech firms like SEA and Razer resemble Tencent and NetEase from China and Nazara in India. Fintech/payment firms like Xendit correspond to Razorpay in India and LianLian Pay in China.

This illustrates how SEA unicorns often follow the sector specialisation and growth paths of more mature Indian and Chinese counterparts, adapting those models for a fragmented, multilingual ASEAN market with strong regional growth potential.

While not every business model from China or India can be directly replicated in Southeast Asia, studying these precedents helps investors identify viable opportunities. Each market, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, has distinct political, legal, and cultural nuances that affect how these models can be adapted and scaled.

Why Not Go Data-Led?

Traditional inbound investing waits for startups to knock on the door. Founders pitch; investors respond. But in today’s competitive environment, that reactive approach can mean missing out.

Instead, we believe in flipping the script, with an outbound, “hunter-like” model grounded in structured research. By tapping into extensive datasets, tracking how proven models from China and India scaled, and applying that lens to Southeast Asia, we can proactively identify opportunities before they even enter the market’s radar.

This approach doesn’t just give us early access; it allows us to build stronger conviction, form meaningful relationships with founders earlier, and ultimately invest in businesses that are solving real, scalable problems across the region.

TNB Aura’s Outbound Methodology: From Global Precedents to Regional Winners

At TNB Aura, we use a structured methodology to identify high-potential investments in Southeast Asia, particularly at the Series A and B stages.

We start by studying proven business models that have scaled in comparable markets like China and India. These precedents help us understand what works at scale, especially in markets with similar demographics, infrastructure gaps, or consumer patterns.

Once we identify sectors with strong fundamentals, we map out which specific business models within those sectors have performed best. From there, we scan the Southeast Asian market to find local players adopting these models.

At the Series A and B stages, companies typically have enough traction to assess unit economics, customer acquisition efficiency, and early market leadership. That gives us the ability to evaluate not just the model but the team’s ability to execute and dominate their category.

This isn’t just pattern matching. We assess each opportunity based on market timing, team quality, pricing dynamics, and long-term scalability. All those factors must align before we commit.

Case Study: Charge+

Charge+, a leading EV charging operator in Southeast Asia, represents a clear application of TNB Aura’s outbound, research-driven investment strategy.

Our conviction in Charge+ was built over three layers of analysis:

1. Industry Lens: Global Trends in EV Charging Infrastructure

Global investment in EV charging infrastructure surpassed $100 billion in 2023 (Source: BBC) and continues to attract far more funding than battery swapping, which remains a smaller, niche segment mainly supported in China; this disparity reflects charging’s broader technical compatibility, faster scale-up, and larger immediate user base, while battery swapping (for all its advantages) faces higher costs and standardisation hurdles. The EV charging infrastructure segment has already produced multiple unicorns, including players like Star Charge and others operating under the combined OEM + Charging Operator model.

We identified this model, integrating hardware, software, and operations, as the most defensible and scalable among four dominant archetypes in the sector:

• Operator-only
• OEM
• OEM + Operator (Hybrid)
• Pure Software Platforms

The hybrid model consistently attracted the most capital and saw the highest valuations globally due to superior control over the customer experience and better unit economics.

2. Sector & Business Model Mapping: Applying the Global Pattern to Southeast Asia

After identifying the winning global model, we mapped the Southeast Asian landscape. We found that Singapore and Thailand had the highest EV penetration rates in the region, making them ideal entry points due to stronger charger utilisation and shorter payback periods.

We canvassed the regional market to identify operators in these geographies, focusing on those with proven traction and strong technical capability.

Charge+ stood out early for:

• Top-tier management team with direct experience in scaling energy and infrastructure businesses
• Leading private player in the region with meaningful traction and execution track record
• Robust pipeline of projects backed by a history of timely delivery
• One of the only true regional players, operating across Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, with a significantly larger addressable market
• Strong financial foundation, including a debt facility already secured for charger rollout, ensuring scalability

3. Pre-Fundraising Engagement: Getting in Early

Rather than waiting for Charge+ to enter a fundraising cycle, we reached out proactively to build the relationship early. By engaging ahead of the round, we were able to understand their trajectory in-depth and help shape the growth narrative.

This early engagement and conviction led us to co-lead Charge+’s Series A round, backing a team we believe is well-positioned to own the EV charging space in Southeast Asia.

The Advantages of a Data-Led Approach

Compared to the traditional “spray-and-pray” method, where VCs make numerous small investments across different sectors without strategic focus, TNB Aura’s approach offers distinct advantages:

• Understanding business models before meeting founders allows us to ask better questions and assess scalability.
• Founders appreciate the depth of our industry knowledge, often remarking that meeting a TNB Aura analyst feels like meeting an industry expert.
• Ability to lead funding rounds, as early engagement allows us to build strong relationships before startups actively fundraise.
• Higher conviction in winners, as we meet ~80% of industry players before making an investment decision.

Comparing Traditional vs. Data-Led Investing

Why TNB Aura’s Outbound Investing Strategy Works

Our outbound, thesis-led strategy, where we proactively research, identify, and engage with the right business models, has contributed to a portfolio loss rate of under 10%. By hunting early and building conviction ahead of the market, we’ve consistently accessed high-quality deals at the right stage.

But this approach isn’t without trade-offs.

Because our methodology is rooted in proven business models from comparable markets like China and India, we may naturally lean away from high-risk, frontier areas like deep tech or biotech, where early signals are harder to pattern-match and the path to scale is less predictable.

That said, our focus is intentional.

Roughly 80% of startups in Southeast Asia are solving familiar, infrastructure-level or consumer problems, very similar to those tackled in slightly more mature ecosystems. This is where we believe the outsized opportunities lie. Instead of betting on moonshots, we back companies with clear commercial viability, scalable execution models, and the potential to lead their categories in the region.

Our edge lies in knowing where to look and having the gumption to move before others do.

Conviction, Not Consensus

While Southeast Asia is often grouped as a single market, the reality is far more nuanced. Each country is on its own trajectory. Indonesia, for instance, is a few years ahead of Vietnam, and Vietnam is now outpacing the Philippines in the evolution of certain business models.

This regional maturity gap creates a unique advantage: the ability to observe, learn, and apply precedents. When we backed Eratani in Indonesia, we were betting on the digitisation of agri-input distribution. The same thesis led us to TechCoop in Vietnam (now one of the largest Series A agritech deals in Southeast Asia), where similar patterns were beginning to emerge. And both of these were informed by global case studies like Dehaat in India.

That’s the core of TNB Aura’s approach: not just identifying trends, but tracking how they ripple across markets, evolve, and localise.

In an ecosystem that’s anything but uniform, we find our edge by being deliberate, data-informed, and always a few steps ahead.