The Shanghai skyline
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Asia’s “nascent capital market” needs a catalyst to kickstart it, an expert said at a CNBC Delivering Alpha event last month.
The solution to having more listings in Asia involves having more products, information, fund managers and even good issuers, according to Jenny Lee, founder and senior managing partner at the Singapore-headquartered venture capital firm Granite Asia.
The venture capitalist said that having a “Taylor Swift of IPOs,” in the region will also help, alluding to a potential acceleration in the IPO market from the listing of a prominent company.
Lee is optimistic on how private companies will perform in 2025 after what she calls a “terrible year” in 2024. She attributes this possible pickup to private companies’ strong fundamentals and an opening in listing windows.
High interest rates in 2024 meant that the IPO window was “relatively shut” in mature markets like the U.S., China, Hong Kong and several parts of Asia excluding Japan and India, Lee said. The many elections held in 2024 also increased uncertainty on how economies will perform, she added.
Compared with 2023, Asia’s IPO activity declined further in 2024. There was a drop of 35% in deals and 51% in proceeds year on year, according to data from EY.
Still, there were some bright spots in the region. India saw 327 listings, the highest number in major IPO markets. Other Asian markets, such as Japan with 84 and South Korea with 75, also saw substantial IPO activity, the same data showed.
Serena Tan, chief executive officer and co-founder of the Malaysia-headquartered Gaia Investment Partners, sees alpha in “high growth” areas within Asia such as health tech and preventive care.
Alpha, in the context of markets, is a measure of the performance of an investment relative to a benchmark.
About $2.3 trillion will be spent on healthcare services in 2026, Tan added. The sector is likely grow because one in four people in the Asia-Pacific region will be at least 60 years old by 2050, data from the Asian Development Bank showed.
Speaking at the same event as Lee, Tan said that funds will raise $30 billion in private equity in Asia this year, led by firms such as Blackstone, KKR and EQT. A significant amount of capital raised will likely flow to India and Japan, Tan said.
However, it’s still important to keep an eye on China and opportunities that will arise from the global dislocation, she explained.
Global dislocation arises from events such as leadership changes or technological breakthroughs. In today’s context, examples include U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs, and Chinese startup DeepSeek’s launch of an artificial intelligence model that cost just millions to train.
Investing in private markets
Private market assets — such as private equity and venture capital — are deemed less volatile than public markets and offer steady returns in the long-term, Tan told CNBC separately.
“Investors should invest through the life cycle and growth of companies, from private to public. If an investors wants to experience the growth, they need exposure in the private markets,” Tan said.
Such private investments in Asia provide a steady internal rate of return of 10% to 20%, depending on the investment strategy, geography and industry, she added.
There are 140,000 private companies with an annual revenue exceeding $100 million, compared with just 19,000 public companies raking in the same amount, she said. “It’s a silly ratio, but that is because there is limited benefit for companies to go public today if they don’t need the capital or limelight.”
Opportunities in Asia’s private equity space lie in small- and mid-market players across industries, ranging from waste recycling firms to manufacturers of packaging materials, according to Tan.
