Beenos founder Teruhide Sato launches $60 million fund for startups

BANGALORE: Teruhide Sato the founder of Japan's Beenos Group, a global conglomerate that consists of a business incubator, has launched a $60-million fund for early stage startups in India, Southeast Asia, Japan and the US. The fund will focus on internet and mobile businesses and has already invested in six Indian companies, whose names were not divulged.

"BEENEXT is theme agnostic,as long as the startup is related to internet and technology," said Teruhide Sato, founder, BEENEXT, and former chief executive officer of Beenos, that has previously invested in ShopClues, Citrus Pay, KartRocket, BuyHatke and Droom. The fund will perform early stage investments anywhere between $100,000 to single digit million dollars, and has made a total of 12 investments so far.

"I will be looking at India (for investments) for the next 10-15 years," said Sato, whose most recent personal investment in India was for messaging app Lookup that allows sellers and customers to interact with each other.