"So they have a 7x, 10x, 12x capital efficiency. It does not mean every investor benefited equally or that the founder necessarily made a lot of money. In most cases, the founder did make a lot and retained much of their cap table. You build companies across this range and then see what sorts of businesses cluster in the more capital-efficient corner. That is in direct contradiction to your thought about embedded finance being an evil thing to do, because the most capital-efficient businesses are either straight-up FinTech enablers or platforms with significant digital financial services on top of them." - Dmitry Levit, General Partner at Cento Ventures
"We have started seeing the beginnings of recovery. In the middle of 2024, and especially fintech in the Philippines, started dragging the ecosystem out of [Inaudible). It is not visible in top-line numbers, but if you remove all the other [Inaudible), fintech is going back up. We lost all the secondaries and IPOs, with the last secondaries being eFishery’s, famously. What we do have now is a bit of data that I still have not figured out how to track, and that is the liquidity that happens post listing, such as take-privates. You have noticed a couple of billion-dollar companies going from public to private, along with a wave of block trading in public companies as investors realign their positions after seeing how public markets treat Southeast Asian assets." - Dmitry Levit, General Partner at Cento Ventures
"The unicorn religion. The mechanics, the gears that locked to each other, were the belief that the large consumer population in Southeast Asia would produce multi-billion dollar outcomes, which brought people from around the globe who made it their specialty to fund creation of unicorns. Availability of such funding automatically created unicorns where they should not have been, and that created a generation of investors whose business model was to sell into unicorn rounds. The first successful step-ups and bits of liquidity happened in 2015 and 2016, thanks to those initial unicorn building rounds in Southeast Asia. By 2017, those who learned these lessons raised their first funds, and from that point it was off to the races. Now these folks have lost their narrative, so they are no longer investing. No wonder we are resetting to that previous level of activity, minus the interest rate effect and minus the COVID effect." - Dmitry Levit, General Partner at Cento Ventures
Jeremy Au, Shiyan Koh, and Dmitry Levit dissect the collapse of eFishery, the breakdown of Indonesia’s growth narrative, and the systemic risks that resurface in Southeast Asia’s venture ecosystem. They explore how IPO failures and inequality capped consumer demand, why bad faith actors gained visibility, and how boom-era fads like embedded lending and play to earn unraveled. Their discussion highlights how funding has reset to 2016 levels, why board oversight is crucial, and where opportunities in agritech and supply chain digitization still remain.
06:07 Unicorn Religion and Reset: Dmitry explains how the belief in Southeast Asia’s consumer population created artificial unicorns, attracted global capital, and birthed a generation of investors dependent on unicorn rounds. With that narrative now broken, funding has reset to 2016 levels.
14:25 Indonesia’s Narratives Collapse: Once built on consumer growth and SME digitization, Indonesia’s investment stories unraveled after weak IPO results and late-stage funding pullback. This led to the retreat of corporates and VCs, shrinking available capital.
20:14 Redefining the Middle Class: Dmitry critiques World Bank definitions, pointing out that Indonesia’s true “digital middle class” is closer to 12–20 million spending users, not 70 million. This smaller but wealthier segment supports realistic billion-dollar outcomes.
23:24 Bad Faith Actors and Fraud: The eFishery scandal highlighted systemic risks in Indonesia’s ecosystem. Dmitry frames it as long-standing misaligned incentives—founders chasing salaries or secondaries—surfacing explosively rather than new corruption.
27:18 Embedded Fintech Debate: Jeremy calls out poorly governed lending arms disguised as platform metrics. Dmitry and Shiyan counter that embedded finance, if properly structured, remains one of the most capital-efficient models in Southeast Asia.
30:35 Capital Efficiency Lessons: Dmitry shares research showing the most efficient companies in Southeast Asia were fintech enablers or platforms layering financial services. These delivered 7x–12x returns on invested capital, shaping their core investment thesis.
37:49 Profitable but Overlooked Players: Despite noise about failed IPOs, Dmitry highlights a dozen Southeast Asian companies quietly positioned for billion-dollar exits, already attracting $300–400M investments from North Asia and Latin America.
