Singapore Has A New Backer For Travel And Retail Startups In Asia

The business incubator and venture builder, Gharage, has landed in Singapore in pursuit of early-stage travel and retail startups that it can invest in across Asia Pacific. The young company—founded in 2019—says it is looking to back pre-seed to Series A entities.

As a subsidiary of global travel retailer Gebr. Heinemann, Gharage should have enough financial firepower to expand its investing capabilities from Europe in order to take several more businesses under its wing.

Running the Asia office since February is Darren Soh. He was picked for his skills in sourcing and investing in tech companies in the region and also managing a large portfolio of them while working at Singtel Innov8, the corporate venture capital arm of communications technology giant Singtel Group. Innov8 has an evergreen fund of $350 million to play with.

Gharage managing director Lennard Niemann, told me: “Darren has a strong network in the Southeast Asia VC ecosystem and has experience as a founder as well, so he has perspective from both sides.” In a statement, Soh said: “We believe that this is the time for Asia—companies are emerging not only as local or regional players, but global powerhouses in their respective fields.”

Niemann said that the motivation to set up in Singapore so soon was driven by the speed at which these companies were being built from scratch. He commented: “Our launch seeks to unlock opportunities for founders to tap into the travel retail ecosystem that Heinemann has built globally, and to bring Asia’s innovations to global travelers.”

Last year, venture capital funds in the region took a more cautious approach to investments, but Singapore led the market accounting for nearly 64% of deal value across Southeast Asia, according to DealStreetAsia.

A diverse portfolio

In Europe, Gharage—which is headquartered in Hamburg a stone’s throw away from its parent’s HQ—has built a portfolio of fairly diverse ventures. Among the most high profile have been a new luxury retail experience at Zurich Airport called Gatezero, Highsnobiety’s first concept store which CEO and founder David Fischer deliberately targeted at a cooler, more plugged in, and generally younger, generation of luxury consumers; and a web3 community for whisky collectibles called Amber Island, essentially an NFT site selling rare expressions.

By far the biggest investment that Gharage has made has been in Duffle, the digital shopping platform that is currently under test in Copenhagen Airport but which will go live in another airport around May. Other consumer goods online platforms are also under test like BoutiqueDrinks, a bottled, ready-to-serve cocktail site fronted by creative director and certified sommelier Cyrus Lorenz and world-class cocktail bartender Maxim Kilian. “With our projects we seek to bring innovation to the global traveler and look beyond borders,” said Niemann.

Heinemann operates more than 500 duty-free and travel retail shops, brand boutiques and concept stores at airports, border crossings, and on board cruise ships. While the biggest part of its business is located in Europe it also has a presence in Asia Pacific airports in Kuala Lumpur and Sydney. At the Australian gateway, the company has just opened a revamped retail space and agreed to extended its operations into the domestic terminals.