Openspace Ventures: Southeast Asia's operator-led VC with an eye on India

Openspace Ventures is a Singapore-based venture firm founded in 2014 by Hian Goh and Shane Chesson (originally as NSI Ventures). It focuses on tech-native and tech-enabled businesses across Southeast Asia at the early and growth stages, and its website now reports $800 million in committed capital across six funds. What distinguishes Openspace is "Active Intelligence": a hands-on operating team that works inside portfolio companies on technology, marketing, HR, legal and finance — a model that has helped produce winners like Gojek and Halodoc.

Investment thesis

Openspace backs companies solving fundamental problems across fintech, healthtech, edtech, consumer applications, cloud-based software, logistics, agritech and cleantech. The firm positions itself as a high-conviction, constructive investor: a diverse regional team plus full-time in-house operations experts — including data scientists who have built machine-learning models for portfolio companies — gives it, in founding partner Hian Goh's words, "a clear competitive advantage" in execution-heavy Southeast Asian markets. More recently the firm has been building a climate-tech practice aimed at bridging the region's climate funding gap.

Funds, stages and cheque sizes

The firm's first fund was $90 million (2014) and its second $135 million, anchored by Temasek and StepStone Group alongside family offices, insurers, pension funds and university endowments. A third fund and the OSV+ opportunity fund for mid-stage follow-ons followed, bringing the platform to $800 million across six funds per the firm's site. Openspace typically leads Series A and B rounds with tickets of $3 million to $5 million, and says its first fund ranks in the top 5% of global performers against Cambridge Associates and Preqin benchmarks.

Notable portfolio

The portfolio includes Gojek, Halodoc, Biofourmis, FinAccel, Love, Bonito, Tanihub, Kumu and Whispir. Openspace led the Series A in Fano Labs in 2017 and is one of its largest non-management shareholders. The India-linked name in the portfolio is Rotimatic, the automated chapati/flatbread-making machine company, which KR Asia flagged as the firm's Indian portfolio company when its second fund closed.

People

Hian Goh — founder of the Asian Food Channel, which he sold to Scripps Interactive for $66 million in 2013 — and Shane Chesson, formerly head of technology investment banking at Citi Asia-Pacific, are the founding partners. The firm has said it operates with a team of 25 people across 10 nationalities, with offices in Singapore, Jakarta and Bangkok.

Programmes / credits and perks

Openspace's "Active Intelligence" operating bench is its core founder programme: in-house specialists in technology, data science, legal, HR and ESG work directly with portfolio companies, and the firm publishes research such as the Coalesce Index on Southeast Asian market interconnectedness. It does not publicise startup credits or perks programmes.

How to engage

Openspace's mandate is Southeast Asia, but its Rotimatic investment shows it will back India-linked teams building for the region. Indian founders expanding into Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam — or building products with natural Southeast Asian adjacencies, from fintech to consumer hardware — are the natural fit. Come with a Series A-ready story and expect a diligence process that digs deep into on-the-ground execution capability.