Saison Capital, Going All Out in the Bear Market Accelerating Web3 Deployment under the Japanese Financial Giant’s Umbrella

Saison Capital Boosting Web3 Adoption in Bear Market through Accelerated Deployment under Japanese Financial Giant's Wing

Author: Zen, LianGuaiNews

Since the second quarter of 2022, the overall primary market of the crypto industry has been on a downward trend. According to a report by research firm FundStrat, the total amount of venture capital invested in crypto projects in the third quarter of this year was $1.4 billion, a decrease of nearly 75% compared to the same period last year. This number has been declining for six consecutive quarters.

However, amidst the bearish market, a venture capital organization called Saison Capital has not only not reduced its investments in crypto and blockchain projects, but has also accelerated its deployment. Of the 30 seed and early-stage investments completed by Saison Capital, over 65% were conducted in the second half of 2022 and the early part of 2023.

• If Grayscale ultimately wins the lawsuit against the SEC, what should we expect next?
• The Evolution of Cryptocurrency Industry Information Sources From Bitcointalk to Twitter
• Decoding Jimmy Zhong’s Double Life From Bitcoin Development Guru to Dark Web Mastermind

Under the umbrella of the Japanese financial giant Credit Saison, with deployable capital over $150 million

Saison Capital is a subsidiary of the Japanese financial company Credit Saison, which was established in 1951 and currently has assets under management of $30 billion. Its main business operations include credit services, credit guarantees, real estate, entertainment, insurance agency, and information processing. In 2014, Credit Saison established Singapore as its global business operations base to promote global business expansion and established Credit Saison Asia Pacific (later renamed “Saison International”) in 2022, accelerating expansion into Southeast Asia and the Indian market. In June 2019, Credit Saison entered the venture capital business and established the venture capital company Saison Capital in Singapore. The institution is wholly owned by Saison International and focuses on equity investments in early-stage startups in Southeast Asia and India, with a particular emphasis on fintech-related verticals, investing nearly $30 million annually.

Since 2020, Saison Capital has expanded its investment activities to the Web3 space and has invested in over 30 cryptocurrency and blockchain startups. In April of this year, in order to further accelerate Web3 investments, Credit Saison announced the establishment of a dedicated token investment company, SaisonCrypto, in Singapore. The company was actually established in September 2022 and is still wholly owned by Saison International. It will focus on early-stage companies in the DeFi and blockchain-based infrastructure sectors. Based on reports from Singaporean tech media e27 and Southeast Asian venture capital media TechinAsia, SaisonCrypto and Saison Capital, although sister companies, have not operated independently and are led and managed by the same team.

According to e27, Qin En Looi, the head of Saison Capital, stated that Saison Capital and Saison Crypto have a total of $150 million to deploy, with the ability to receive additional support from Credit Saison. Their individual investment amounts are estimated to be between $200,000 and $500,000, and they provide “follow-up support” to portfolio companies throughout their development process, such as token economics consulting and talent recruitment support to accelerate their market strategy in Southeast Asia and India. In addition, Saison Capital also places great emphasis on helping the growth of entrepreneurial teams and has created an ecosystem for this purpose.

In July last year, Saison Capital partnered with payment giant Stripe to launch a new insight program for founders of their portfolio companies, aiming to directly connect them with leaders in the fields of engineering, product, public policy, recruitment, and sales at Stripe. Through group learning sessions and one-on-one meetings, they explore topics such as market expansion planning, product roadmap development, and talent strategy. Saison Capital also has a 2to3 product manager community that helps product managers expand their social networks, promote dialogue and exchange, and organize seminars with industry practitioners. In January this year, Saison Capital collaborated with product analytics solution MixLianGuainel, which held group learning sessions with their 2to3 product manager community to share insights from 7,000 technology companies.

Accelerating the shift to Web3 and focusing on applications and financial infrastructure is Saison Capital’s approach in a bearish cryptocurrency market where funds are exiting. Looi stated that while the transaction scales are smaller in the challenging market conditions, the quality is higher. The noise level has decreased, making it slightly easier to discover high-quality companies.

Saison Capital categorizes their portfolio into applications and enablers. When selecting projects in the application category, they tend to lean towards companies with well-known IP in the media or entertainment fields, as well as Asian founders with a good track record in the Web2 domain.

One example of a Web3 decentralized esports company is Avium, which completed a $2 million pre-seed funding round led by Saison Capital in August last year, with participation from East Ventures and others. The platform aims to bring creators and artists together, and Caravan Studios and Circle Studios have already joined Avium, previously developing entertainment IPs for well-known brands like Marvel Comics, Netflix, Tencent, and Dota. Avium’s co-founder, Ivan Yeo, previously founded the largest esports club in Southeast Asia, EVOS, based in Indonesia. Co-founder Nathanael Lim has previously worked as a blockchain lawyer for international companies such as Huobi, Binance, Facebook, and Razer.

Another example is Mythic Protocol, which recently completed a $6.5 million funding round led by Shima Capital founder Yida Gao, with participation from Alpha JWC, Saison Capital, and others. As a Web3 collaboration entertainment protocol, Mythic aims to build a collaborative entertainment ecosystem, using a game-first strategy to acquire, retain, and expand users. It was founded by Indonesia’s largest game development studio, which has been in the gaming industry for 12 years and brings along with it 100 of the best employees as they transition to Web3.

Saison Capital also focuses on startups that provide Web3 infrastructure for marketing solutions, payments, finance, and insurance.

For example, Evertas, a cryptocurrency insurance company, completed a Series A financing with a total of $14 million in December last year, led by Polychain Capital. It has created comprehensive cryptocurrency underwriting tools and frameworks, end-to-end insurance products for cryptocurrency (including claims processing), and comprehensive risk management processes to provide much-needed insurance products for the development and maturity of the cryptocurrency industry. In addition, there is Jia, an emerging market small business lending institution based on blockchain, which completed a $4.3 million seed round of financing in May this year. Through the first token incentive model for small and micro enterprises, Jia enables borrowers to become active participants in the sharing economy by utilizing blockchain-based loans, investments, and ownership, providing motivation for emerging market small businesses.

According to the official investment portfolio information and statistics from LianGuaiNews, Saison Capital has also invested in the following Web3 projects:

Financial Infrastructure:

• RWA protocol Helix completed a $2 million Pre-Seed round of financing in September 2023

• Cryptocurrency accounting solution provider Cryptoworth completed strategic financing in August 2023

• Digital asset risk and collateral management protocol Concordia completed a $4 million seed round of financing in June 2023

• Decentralized finance company Thala Labs completed a $6 million seed round of financing in October 2022

• NFT infrastructure company Gomu completed a $5 million seed round of financing in October 2022

• Web3 financial operations platform Headquarters completed a $5 million financing round in September 2022

• Blockchain-driven B2B marketplace Bazaar Technologies completed a $30 million Series A financing round in August 2021

• Crypto savings app Finblox completed a $3.9 million financing in March 2022

• Crypto investment solution and passive cryptocurrency investment gateway Flint completed a $5.1 million seed round of financing in January 2022

• Non-custodial wallet based on Polygon – Wind

• Multi-party computation protected wallet Krayon

• Crypto banking and payment platform BVNK completed a $40 million Series A financing round in May 2022

• Multi-chain NFT exchange and options exchange market NF3 completed a $1.65 million seed round of financing in December 2022

• Provider of programmable currency technology solutions D3 Labs completed a Pre-Seed round of financing in April 2023

• Copra, an on-chain credit platform

Applications:

• Vantient, a Web3 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solution, raised $3.45 million in June 2023

• Binocs, an encrypted tax reporting application, raised $4 million in September 2022

• Bunch, a social gaming startup

• Safary, a Web3 data analytics tool

• Hashmail, a Web3 email service

• Anime Metaverse, a company specializing in publishing and licensing anime and manga

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!