Garena Interactive, Southeast Asia’s largest internet and mobile platform company, said on Thursday it had raised $170 million from investors including Malaysia’s wealth fund Khazanah.
Headquartered in Singapore, Garena operates across three major internet categories: digital content, marketplace ecommerce, and electronic payments.
Khazanah led the series D funding round. It joins existing investors in Garena including General Atlantic, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Keytone Ventures.
Garena represented the first Southeast Asia internet investment for each of these firms. In total, Garena has now raised over $500 million from investors to support its growth.
Founded in 2009, Garena has achieved compound annual revenue growth of more than 90% over the past five years to over $300 million of gross revenue in 2015.
Consumers engage with the Garena platform and its associated content partners for over 1.6 billion hours a month, the company said.
Garena has also launched Shopee, an online marketplace; and AirPay, a payments platform.
“Shopee is the fastest growing ecommerce business the region has ever seen and is among the fastest growing in the world,” said group president Nicholas Nash.
Garena is a portmanteau of the words ‘Global Arena’ and signifies the Company’s global ambition to ‘connect the dots’ for hundreds of millions of individuals using technology. The company has grown to almost 4,600 employees today across the region.
“With this new round of capital, we have no doubt that Shopee and AirPay will be the leading offerings in the market,” said Forrest Li, founder, chairman, and group CEO of Garena
Kirkland & Ellis represented Garena, led by Hong Kong corporate partners David Zhang and Amie Tang.
