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Perspectives: Where VCs are betting in Asia in 2026
459 Plays2 days ago
Venture capital is often perceived as a game of high stakes and strategic bets. Rohit Agarwal, Managing Director of Peak XV, joins Dave Sabow, Global Head of HSBC Innovation Banking, to provide an in-depth look. Their conversation explores the nuances of capital deployment in Asia for 2026, the sectors attracting investment, and the evolving landscape for venture capitalists.
This episode was recorded in Singapore during the launch of HSBC Innovation Banking on October 28, 2025.
Disclaimer: Views of external guest speakers do not represent those of HSBC.
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Transcript
Introduction and Keynote Speakers
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to HSBC Global Viewpoint, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
00:00:12
Speaker
Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes. Thanks for listening, and now onto to today's show. Rohit Agarwal, Managing Director Peak15, and asked him directly, where is your firm actually deploying money in 2026 and why?
00:00:28
Speaker
My name is David Sabo. I'm the Global Head of Innovation Banking for HSBC. I'm actually here in Singapore where we recently launched Innovation Banking for Singapore covering the broader Southeast Asian market.
00:00:41
Speaker
um I'm thrilled to be joined by Rohit Agarwal, Managing Director at Peak15. Rohit, thank you so much for making the time to join us today. Looking forward to the conversation. you for having me, David. Thank you.
Capital Deployment and ASEAN Opportunities
00:00:54
Speaker
ah We're going to cover a lot, is as much as we can, but um some of the key areas that we're focused on are capital deployment, which sectors are attracting capital, what you're excited about as you think about the broader ASEAN opportunity. so If you don't mind, i'd I'd love to start there at the very beginning.
00:01:11
Speaker
I just privileged and ah you know ah very fortunate to have great ah support all along. It started with family, very sort of a large family and a very kind ah ah growing up years, if you will. And then over the years, I've found great support from mentors that have shaped me in many ways. And all through that, I think a constant has been a focus on ah purpose and values.
00:01:36
Speaker
I think ah many of the people that I have partnered with have ah taught me this one philosophy that, you know, ah the most important things in life you can't measure. And these are things like kindness. These are
Singapore as a Tech Hub
00:01:50
Speaker
things like impact. These are things like ah relationships and happiness and all the good stuff in life that you'll eventually care about. You can't measure, you know, even in a lot of the conversations with founders, I think we talk a lot about this philosophy of having a North Star.
00:02:05
Speaker
ah We say, look, if you have a North Star, everything else is easy to align because you could always sort of fall back on what is our North Star here. It's like, for example, at peak 15, our North Star is performance, and that helps to make a lot of conversations very easy.
00:02:22
Speaker
ah Many times you are going into a meeting, quacking out, and you're like, There's so many variables in here, but and you know if you have a sense of purpose, if you values, if you have a North Star, think that makes things a lot easier. Well, I mean, and I'm sure a lot of the entrepreneurs who you're meeting with probably channel their own vision, their own North Star around what is the impact that they want to have on an industry, on a new technology, on a new market.
00:02:47
Speaker
You've been investing here for a while now. Yep. um I guess I'm just curious, like as you think about the current macro, um obviously an incredible new technology wave, not new I guess, but it's certainly more front and center around AI impacting every subsector.
00:03:03
Speaker
ah We're seeing continued shifts in terms of um globalization. like Tell us about kind of what you're excited about, maybe some of the tailwinds for Singapore and the broader region. I think Singapore is in a very interesting spot right now. If you think ah over the past 15, 20 years, pretty much every major technology company that's you know listed on the NASDAQ or think every technology company with over a billion dollars of revenue ah on the planet has a presence here in Singapore.
00:03:35
Speaker
that has brought in a lot of talent and into Singapore. Every major financial institution is present here, that has brought in a lot of talent. So you see this interesting sort of ah a pool of talent, which is not just technology-oriented and savvy and has grown up in sort of big tech and building these businesses across APAC and US, s but also the diversity of talent. Like, there are very few places on the planet ah where you could build a go-to-market team that can help you scale ah from APAC to Australia to LATAM to Middle East and the Americas and one of those places. Really, you could do that in the US because you have the experience and the diversity and the other place really ah is Singapore.
00:04:20
Speaker
um So I think we have seen over the past, you know, say eight to 10 years, a lot of founders from the broader APAC Australian region And even in some cases, Europe ah moved to Singapore ah because they want to straddle the dual opportunity set of growing in APAC, where the markets are still underserved with respect to enterprise technology, with respect to AI, with respect to all the emerging tech, and use this as a base to expand into the US as well.
00:04:51
Speaker
What has changed in the last two, three years, especially if you ask me, is that AI startups don't really need a big army of people to build a product or sell a product.
00:05:05
Speaker
Most of these products leverage a lot of sort of ah um AI to build their own products, which means they could build with one-tenth the
AI's Role in Startup Dynamics
00:05:14
Speaker
number of people. Like most of the AI startups that we come across in that we are funding today have less than 15, 20 people, even when they have a few million dollars of revenue.
00:05:23
Speaker
Most of them choose to go to market in a sort of ah self-serve or open source way. So they don't need a lot of people on day one to sell their product like you would in enterprise sales.
00:05:36
Speaker
ah And I think both of those things make Singapore an even more appealing place because you could have this great sort of city, lot of things, great infrastructure, great connectivity, safety, all of those things. And you could have oh co-located team where while you're trying to build a global business, you're not distributed at a very early stage across many different parts of the continents and many different time zones and so on.
00:06:01
Speaker
ah So we're seeing this constant sort of inward movement of founders that are looking to build global businesses into Singapore. And that's really the opportunity set that we are focused on.
00:06:13
Speaker
But yeah, Yeah. I mean, I think you know in a country of what, roughly 6 million people, that efficiency of how these business models can get spun up and as you know, right, we're in kind of, you know, version one of this. This is the worst AI that we'll use in our lifetimes.
00:06:28
Speaker
um That's a really interesting point. um An investor once told me that you ah create in person, so to your point around co-locating, but you can execute over Zoom. And so I think that density and diversity of talent here to scale companies quickly with, as you said, right, sometimes a tenth of the number of people um is an incredible opportunity for the region.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah, and also like, you know, there are some very ah deep tech hubs in close proximity to Singapore. You know, Australia is a great place to find a lot of the open source talent, a lot of the product-led growth talent, which is all the alumni of so companies like Atlassian and Canva that really ah sort of first pioneered this movement of building billion-dollar ah revenue companies without having to sell face-to-face to customers. But then you also have places like India and China where there is incredible engineering depth available. So I think founders from being based in Singapore or building in APAC kind of leverage all of these unique ah capabilities and advantages and are building some
00:07:38
Speaker
ah what we call global maxima companies. I think you would hear me in in our conversations refer to this term a lot. ah So, you know, we've been investing in the region for about, I don't know, 10, 15 years, about 20 years in India and, you know, 10 years in Southeast Asia. So a lot of the first decade, if you will, or until 2020, we saw a lot of companies kind of get inspired by what is happening in the US and launch models and which compete with U.S., but really sometimes ah serving a different customer segment that, say, the U.S. companies are not serving, ah or, you know, compete on price, leveraging the lower cost structure of APAC markets and so on.
00:08:26
Speaker
But I think in the last five, six years, that landscape has changed a lot. In ai it's just completely reversed, where ah we just see founders wanting to build global maxima companies, global maxima products. These are best-in-class products. They want to go for the win.
00:08:42
Speaker
They're not looking to play for sort of the tier two trophy, if you will. They want the big prize, and they yeah they're really building what are global maxima products. Well, we share that conviction, which is why we launched Innovation Banking in Singapore. um And one of the things, and I live in the heart of the beast, right? I live in San Francisco, um which has this density of capital and talent and innovation and real culture around that. But as I'm traveling the world, as I spend more time in Singapore and other parts of Asia,
00:09:13
Speaker
the quality of the founders and the pace of innovation is blowing my mind. And it's an entirely different kind of paradigm than I think a lot of ah people just isolated to maybe California or US-centric view don't appreciate as much. um So, you know, that's what we're really excited about is can we, you know, bring some connections around, bring new risk-based capital into new markets, um taking, you know, companies from Singapore to the world watching you know these innovators really go and scale and and create best-in-class companies. So um we're really excited to see that happen. Yeah, and I mean, David, look, San Francisco and Valley are like just incredible places to get started. If you will ask me what is the contrast between, say, a Singapore, a founder starting their companies in Singapore or in San Francisco, I think sometimes the zero to one ah in this part of the world is a little bit easier because and you could land your first few customers without having to compete with
00:10:15
Speaker
tens or hundreds of similar startups that you would in the Valley. um And that helps you get started quickly. There's probably not been a harder time in history to try to predict the future, but that's not going to stop me from asking the question. um As you think about, let's say, 2026, 2027, and let's keep it Singapore-centric, what are those things that the headlines are missing today about um the market that you think you know are going to be really important to watch? i think I we're just continuing to see an ah incredible
Investment Strategies and Market Dynamics
00:10:47
Speaker
pipeline of opportunities, ah especially at the cutting edge of AI and open source, where a small number of researchers, Singapore has some great universities, a lot of great researchers ah from places in China, in Australia, in India are moving to Singapore. to start open source projects. ah
00:11:08
Speaker
Singapore has a very sort of supportive grant regime where it supports ah these open source projects to get off more than, say, in some other places that you could imagine. So we're seeing a ah a movement, if you will, stirring up that will, you know, I think it's still, and of the pot is still stirring before it kind of floats ah flows outward. I think ah we see a sense of energy and excitement around companies that are building for the world, initially distributing their products open source and as they gain adoption, build out monetization strategies, I think this could be sort of one theme that could just surprise.
00:11:48
Speaker
ah Also, in a world which is challenging geopolitically, i think building open source companies where you have contributors from all around the world, ah be co-owners ah in technology, in moderation, in sort of IP, is a new way of building that we are seeing ah founders or a new path to building global companies that founders are taking. So I think that is one sort of big area that we're excited about, that we're seeing a lot of companies in.
00:12:19
Speaker
I think um the second, if you will, will be some of the large regional companies that had gone a little bit, the ah if you will, had slowed down a little bit in the region, whether it be the great companies in Indonesia or Philippines, like financial services companies, consumer internet companies,
00:12:43
Speaker
I think they're all making a huge comeback. I think in some places, it is already evident. Our biggest sort of publicly listed technology company from Singapore is ah C Group, which runs Shopee and Free Fire. And think they've seen maybe, ah I don't know what its latest stock price is, but like you know they've seen a massive surge, ah tens of billions of dollars in their market cap over the past years.
00:13:06
Speaker
just about 12, 15 months, 18 months. And I think a similar sort of ah trend is growing in a lot of the operating data of private companies. So it's not yet out there.
00:13:18
Speaker
Many of these companies have gotten and massively profitable. So, you know, it is not all yet out there because private companies are not raising capital every ah every day and are not traded every day. So there are not new marks on these companies. But I think some of these companies will really surprise people in the scale that they've gotten to and the profitability that they are operating with. Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker
And it is, you know, the ecosystem impact of that, right? Because the the early, you know, um founders and employees of those companies tend to go and create other things. Yes. yeah So that becomes a great you know kind of flywheel for the market. Alumni of big tech or alumni of successful tech startups is the most sort of probable next founder category. So I think we're really excited.
00:14:04
Speaker
As some of these companies see liquidity, ah we think it will trickle down into the ecosystem and create a lot more fun. But you know for venture as an asset class, right it's already a fairly long duration commitment that your LPs are making.
00:14:18
Speaker
um We know it's cyclical. um DPI has been the big global headline in terms of kind of liquidity. um Talk to me about how you know you think about that and maybe regionally some of the nuances around liquidity. Do you think about um private equity as a key source, growth equity, or then even some of the yeah the regional stock exchanges that you're focused on?
00:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think if we just step back, what drives liquidity? I don't think it is just the capital markets. It's the quality of businesses. When people buy businesses in public markets or even more so in private markets, they're expecting to buy a business that can compound over a long period of time. Different companies stages of capital back different stages of predictability. We are at the very sort of one end of the spectrum where we go after an idea that has very low visibility, low predictability. But as you keep building, ah you know, you want to get to a repeatable motion in your business, whether it be revenue, whether it be profitability, you want to get into a cadence where you could project a business over three, four, five years. i think that's the number one challenge that most
00:15:32
Speaker
when should businesses have before they can access liquidity, whether it be in public markets or in late stage private financings. If they have predictability of their business and some scale, I mean, there is liquidity available.
00:15:46
Speaker
So the way we've always thought about liquidity is that getting liquidity for a 20, 25, $30 million dollars revenue business that's not growing fast enough is equally difficult in every part of the world as it is here. It's just that we have a lot more of those businesses here and fewer of the 100, 200, 500 million dollar businesses. But we are getting there and it's changing very fast. We've seen that in India where the number of sort of 100 million dollar revenue companies has grown very fast in the past few years. We're seeing that in Southeast Asia.
00:16:16
Speaker
Another thing, David, you appreciate is that most of the companies that were operating here until a few years back were focused on the regional markets. And we are still like, you know, India, Southeast Asia, we are all sort of sub $5,000 GDP per capita market. So it just took a lot of time.
00:16:34
Speaker
lot longer for companies to get to the scale that, you know, companies in US, China could get to. ah But now that's shrinking. Like we're now seeing tons and tons of examples of companies getting started and getting to 100 million revenue in, say, five, six years, sometimes in now the AI wave, we are seeing companies getting started and get there, you know, in 24 months. Amazing. Yeah.
00:16:57
Speaker
So I think that's changing, that's changing the outlook and the options for liquidity. If you have 200, $500 million dollars revenue businesses that are growing north of 30, 40%, you could actually take them public on most exchanges around the world.
00:17:16
Speaker
If you have a $200 to $400 million dollars revenue business where growth has slowed, it's a bit harder to take them public. But there is a lot of capital available to buy these businesses, and that's private equity, that's secondary financing, and so on and so forth. So while, you know, I wouldn't want to get into the details of what has it been for us, but we've had lots of IPOs where we have had successful sort of ah ah opportunities to distribute dollars back. and But also, equally, we have seen interest from um private equity and secondary buyers in all companies that have crossed, say, this $100 million dollar threshold. So, you know, bottom line for us is how many companies that we pack can get to a $100 million dollar revenue threshold? Because that's the bare minimum where, you know, liquidity options start to open up. And then as you go from there, you know, the options just keep widening. Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
No, I mean, in the the opportunity for us to think about how do we bring more of those growth equity, ah private equity, even family offices into some of these markets that are um just not as well known in other parts of the world, I think is a tremendous opportunity. But I think you're right. Your point around it starts with the quality of the business that you are creating is spot on. I guess ah a self-serving question.
00:18:36
Speaker
um So, you know, we are about two and a half years into the the build of innovation banking at HSBC. um We'll end this year in 10 different markets with just less than a thousand people.
00:18:48
Speaker
um We have this belief that we have to have the ability to finance cash burning companies, that we have to have a really high touch service proposition, that we have to have a unique go to market proposition.
00:18:59
Speaker
um That's all the banking stuff. What's the other impact or areas that you think we can help to take advantage and maybe accelerate some of the themes for Singapore in particular?
00:19:11
Speaker
this One thing that I have not talked about or touched upon is that we are probably one of the largest ah ah believers in fintech.
00:19:21
Speaker
and then Given our regions, um India, Southeast Asia, when we first started investing here, lagged the financial infrastructure for 2020. you know, digital adoption. Like you couldn't do e-commerce if you don't have like payment methods and people ah don't have ways to sort of finish
Fintech Innovations and Global Finance
00:19:40
Speaker
transactions online. So ah we started investing in every kind of financial services, fintech, digital fintech ah that you could imagine. ah But ah while the local infrastructures all around the world have kind of matured, you could now have a bank account or a wallet pretty quickly in any market.
00:20:00
Speaker
ah The challenges that we saw in domestic fintech are all compounded 10x when you move out. And the world is only kind of getting more and more globalized in some ways. Not a difficult statement to make these days. It's not linear. Yeah. But the trend is real. But the trend is real. And as a result, I mean, people are traveling. on Travel is a beautiful use case.
00:20:23
Speaker
um Lots and lots of money ah needs to move across borders. you know Companies are more global. um Lots and lots of settlements need to happen cross-border.
00:20:34
Speaker
And we're seeing a huge opportunity ah in cross-border fintech. I think removing friction for global money movement um is something that we are 100% focused on, and we think there's actually some amazing technologies coming.
00:20:49
Speaker
So Rohit, what's one area that we didn't touch on that you think is important for us to kind of ah talk about just based on what you're seeing and hearing or observing in the market? You know, David, I've heard a lot of versions of what AI will change and how will it bring sort of, ah in some cases, depending upon which version you believe, extreme ah prosperity and productivity to, you know, ah gloom and doom around job loss and so on.
00:21:19
Speaker
ah And I don't know where we'll end up. i I hope it's the farmer. And I really believe that it's the farmer, which is that like all and great technologies, it will make us more productive, it will make us more prosperous, and it will be a huge catalyst, as you would think, for ah for for all markets around the world for growth, GDP growth, and so on.
00:21:40
Speaker
But one of the most interesting conversations I've had in the last, you know, one or two months with the founder was that one of the biggest beneficiary sectors of all of this will be healthcare.
00:21:53
Speaker
As people live longer, as people kind of want to take more care of themselves, want to have a productive life for longer, they would need more and more healthcare services.
AI in Healthcare and Future Implications
00:22:04
Speaker
i think in the U.S., probably healthcare is now the largest... portion of the GDP and growing. It's already at 5 trillion or something. I'm not specific on numbers.
00:22:15
Speaker
ah But in emerging markets, it's still very underpenetrated. So as you think, we are a very young population in most emerging markets compared to markets like you know Japan or other markets developed work where the aging ah population is a challenge. I think this view of the world that healthcare will have the largest number of workers and will be the largest spend area ah for economies in the next 10, 15, 20 years is an interesting ah sort of perspective to have as the we think about the impact of AI and where
00:22:49
Speaker
could be some very large shifts in spend and which areas could disproportionately create large outcomes. Yeah. And in the macroeconomic impact of that, right, when you think about labor productivity fueling GDP growth, is you think about ah markets where you have maybe a shrinking population.
00:23:09
Speaker
um Having healthcare, not just in terms of longevity, but also remote patient care, yeah remote patient monitoring, um you know aging in in your own home as opposed to facilities, there's an entire new wave of of transformation, I think, that um we we can only begin to guess the economic implications of it.
00:23:31
Speaker
And yeah, we are seeing companies um in you know some of the areas that you mentioned, ah remote patient monitoring, lots of predictive healthcare for ah people to have a longer productive life and so on and so forth. It's a very exciting area yeah that you know we don't really talk about when we talk about AI, but I think that's one area which we'll see a lot of deal wins over the next one or two decades. Well, is a as a middle-aged person now, I'm really rooting for AI to move fast in that area. Roy, there's so much more we could talk about, but thank you so much for your
Conclusion and Future Outlook
00:24:04
Speaker
time. um This was a great conversation. Thank you so much for your support of HSBC Innovation Banking and of our team here. And we're really excited to ah to bring this to life with you in the path ahead.
00:24:15
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you, David, for having me. It's been a pleasure. course. Thank you for joining us at HSBC Global Viewpoint. We hope you enjoyed the discussion. Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.