Skift Take
As an airline, AirAsia has led its peers in many metrics, especially on cost control. But its new effort to nurture startups has the odds against it. Will this effort bring strategic gains for the company? We’ll know in a few years.
AirAsia, one of the world's most successful budget airlines, has launched a venture capital fund that will focus on early-stage businesses, the company said Monday.
The fund, called RedBeat Capital, will invest mostly in consumer-facing companies primarily based in southeast Asia. It has already invested in a voice-technology specialist, though it didn't share details.
"Our goals are to find startups that can help make our product better and get help with controlling our costs," said Tony Fernandes, CEO of AirAsia Group. "But we also see startups in ASEAN [countries who are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] as not having had enough access to customers or capital, and we want to help with that."
RedBeat Capital will focus, though not exclusively, on travel-related enterprises.
"This isn't tokenism or some feel-good thing just to mollify a board of directors that we're looking into innovation, which I know is what sometimes happens when corporations do things like this with startups," Fernandes, the ebullient Malaysian tycoon that runs the airline group.
At a New York press conference, Fernandes backed away from media speculation that the fund size would ultimately be $60 million.
Fernandes said he had no objective for a particular size portfolio of investments or the size of the fund.
