Singaporean investment fund chooses Ideals VDR for fundraising and M&A deals due to transparent pricing plans
Real State
Industry
Real State
Overview
Cambridge RE Partners is a Singapore-based fund manager focused on investments in real estate and renewable energy in the Asia-Pacific region.
After comparing several virtual data rooms (VDRs) for its real estate fundraising the company chose Ideals for its affordability and ease of use. Investment analyst Eden Tan said: “We were really impressed by the demo and were confident Ideals offered the best user experience compared to other providers.”
The team has used Ideals to streamline the acquisition processes of real estate assets.
The context
Founded in 2022, Cambridge Partners is an alternatives fund manager whose main interests are defensive and long WALE (Weighted Average Lease Expiry) real estate and energy infrastructure assets in Asia and Australasia. Around 80% of their business is in real estate.
The team decided that email communications were not secure enough and they would look for a cost-effective data room provider that would be easy to use, not only for them but also for project partners and investors.
“Some data rooms make you create an account and are very hard to navigate. This would be a bad experience for our potential investors,” said Eden. “We wanted a seamless experience to help streamline our fundraising and Ideals was the best solution.”
Key challenges
The company needed a secure platform to share documents with potential investors and ensure an efficient fundraising process.
Their specific requirements were:
- A centralized secure document repository
- Different permission levels for a range of users
- Options to amend those levels when expressions of interest became serious
- An easy-to-manage file structure so they could segregate different assets.
Solution
After comparing multiple VDR providers, Cambridge Partners chose Ideals after being impressed by the security and ease of use. They also noted that the transparent pricing structure offered by Ideals stood out against the competition and enabled them to properly plan data storage costs.
The team started by granting access to a handful of users and then expanded to different groups as the fundraising progressed, including their project partners and potential investors.
Using Ideals they could:
- Set up groups for different user types and control what they could see/edit/download
- Easily remove any investors who decided not to proceed
- Segregate different assets within the fund
- Track all the activity to gauge levels of interest/engagement
“We were able to monitor whether investors were serious or not, but also spot any issues that might arise. These insights are invaluable when raising an investment fund as it means we know where to focus our energy,” he said.
The future
Cambridge Partners has already acquired three new assets with a value of $300 million. The latest is a university office building in Sydney’s central business district valued at A$111.58 million ($70.2 million). They are now considering upgrading to the Ideals Enterprise Plan so they can run several projects concurrently.
Asked for his three favorite Ideals features, Eden listed:
- A seamless login experience
- Granular permission levels
- The insights from the reporting dashboard
“It’s so useful to be able to check the activity log in real time and see what investors are looking at and gauge their level of interest,” says Eden.
