Pitch us
Our thesis

Ten markets, different rules. We back the software that connects them.

Southeast Asia is ten markets with different languages, currencies and regulations, which makes it hard for software to scale. We invest in AI-native companies that remove that friction.

The fragmentation

Every border adds friction.

A company that wins in one ASEAN market often has to rebuild for the next one. That is why the region has many national champions and few regional ones.

SG · SGD
Singapore
English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil
ID · IDR
Indonesia
Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese
VN · VND
Vietnam
Vietnamese
TH · THB
Thailand
Thai
PH · PHP
Philippines
Filipino, English, Cebuano
MY · MYR
Malaysia
Malay, English, Mandarin
KH · KHR
Cambodia
Khmer
MM · MMK
Myanmar
Burmese
LA · LAK
Laos
Lao
BN · BND
Brunei
Malay, English
Focus areas

Three areas where AI removes cross-border friction.

01

Cross-border payments

SMEs in Southeast Asia lose days and margin to correspondent banking, FX spreads and fragmented local rails. We back companies using AI for routing, reconciliation, FX risk and compliance, so a merchant in Surabaya can pay a supplier in Ho Chi Minh City as easily as paying across the street.

What we look for

  • B2B cross-border payables and receivables
  • AI-driven KYC/KYB and transaction monitoring
  • Multi-currency treasury and FX hedging for SMEs
  • Real-time rail interoperability (PayNow, QRIS, PromptPay, DuitNow)
02

Multilingual customer agents

Most frontier models are trained mostly on English. Southeast Asian consumers buy, complain and switch brands in dozens of languages and dialects, often through chat apps. We back teams building voice and text agents that handle local language, code-switching and cultural context for commerce, financial services and logistics.

What we look for

  • Voice and chat agents for commerce and customer support
  • Localised LLM fine-tuning, evaluation and safety
  • Conversational commerce on WhatsApp, LINE and Zalo
  • Agentic workflows for collections, onboarding and sales
03

Supply chain intelligence

The region moves goods across 25,000 islands and some of the busiest ports in the world, yet much of its freight still runs on spreadsheets and phone calls. We back AI-native platforms for forecasting, document automation, customs and trade compliance, and logistics orchestration.

What we look for

  • Customs, trade documentation and tariff automation
  • Demand forecasting and inventory intelligence
  • Freight visibility and multi-modal orchestration
  • Trade finance underwriting from supply chain data
Why now

Three shifts made this possible.

Models that understand the region

Open and fine-tuned language models now handle Bahasa, Thai, Vietnamese and Tagalog well enough for production use.

Connected payment rails

Bilateral QR and real-time payment links between PayNow, PromptPay, DuitNow and QRIS give companies new rails to build on.

Supply chains moving to the region

Manufacturing is shifting into Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and intra-ASEAN trade is growing with it.

What we look for

We favour founders who can expand from one market into several.

01

Multi-market from the start

Architecture, pricing and compliance designed for more than one country, even if you launch in one.

02

AI at the core

Models do work that once needed local teams, so cost does not grow with every new market.

03

A clear second market

A credible plan, and ideally early evidence, for how you will expand beyond your first market.

04

Proprietary data loops

Every transaction, conversation or shipment makes the product better for the next one.

05

Regulatory fluency

You treat licensing and compliance as part of your advantage, not as an afterthought.

06

Regional founders

Teams who know the markets they serve, often with lived experience across several of them.

Does this sound like you?

If you are building AI-native infrastructure for Southeast Asia, we would like to hear from you.

Pitch Sejna