Celebrity photographer Dominic Khoo leaves the industry to focus on investment fund focussed on luxury watches.

Dominic Khoo, the celebrity photographer also dubbed as Singapore's "most expensive living artist," has left the photography industry to focus on investment-grade watches, according to a statement issued by his company The Watchfund.

The Watchfund adopts an investment structure that allows people to actually wear high-end timepieces and sell them later for a profit. At $16 million in assets under management in si months, the company makes money by giving stakeholders access to limited edition watches and enjoy exclusive price advantages. The fund also offers provenance pieces, or timepieces that used to be worn by royalty and historical figures.

The concept of a watch fund is not new, the statement said, and was inspired by a similar system in Luxembourg. In the latter, however, investors only held onto a statement of investment and were not allowed to wear the watches.

The wealth management industry is already familiar with funds targeting areas such as jewellery, fine wines and art, and is part of a trend in holding "hard assets" seen as inflation-proof and relatively lowly correlated with mainstream investments. 

"Money making is not enough, fun most co-exist. We wanted to create a whole new different kind of investment system," said Khoo. 

The Watch Fund was founded in February 2013. Khoo himself is a veteran in the watch industry, having trained with auction house Antiquorum in Geneva in 1974 and serving as brand manager for Girard-Perregaux. The company is based in Singapore and Hong Kong.