Collecting data will help drive benchmarks and hence draw in more private clients to the space, the association hopes.

The Singapore Venture Capital and Private Equity Association is partnering with US-based Cambridge Associates to produce data for Southeast Asian benchmarks, seen as a stepping stone for drawing in more private clients to the asset class, a report said.

SVCA vice chairman Gary Ng, partner also at Altair Capital Advisors, was reported by the Business Times (of Singapore) as saying that the SVCA will encourage members to compile data. At present, the association has 79 general partners as members. The paper said that as many as 200 operate in the city-state.

There is no target date for launching any benchmarks, the report continued.

In recent years private banks, family offices and other wealth management entities have been drawn to asset classes such as VC, willing to tolerate lower liquidity than is available on listed equities because of superior yields. Without functioning benchmarks, however, deciding how well or poorly VC returns are is difficult. This has been a relatively opaque asset class in recent times, although groups such as Cambridge Associates and Preqin, a research group, cover it.

Preqin, for example, reported in January this year that 2018 was a record year for venture capital-backed deal making, driven by a number of new participants in the space. The number of entities backing venture capital portfolio companies exceeded 10,000 for the first time - twice the number of deal makers recorded in 2013. Asia in particular has seen a rush of new deal makers, and Asia-based investors are now involved with almost 30 per cent of deals.

A report issued this week by Cerulli Associates, a Boston, US-based research firm, said that in jurisdictions such as Europe private capital is no longer seen as beyond the reach of mass-affluent, retail investors.