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SINGAPORE—A venture-capital firm launched last year by Facebook Inc. co-founder Eduardo Saverin and a partner has raised more than $143.6 million in the first close for its first fund, according to a regulatory filing Thursday.

B Capital Group, which was founded in 2015 by the Brazilian-born Mr. Saverin and Raj Ganguly, a veteran of private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC, said in a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal Thursday that it sees promising opportunities to invest in innovative tech firms around the world, not just in traditional hot spots like Silicon Valley.

The company has offices in Manhattan Beach, Calif., San Francisco and Singapore.

The fundraising comes as some venture capitalists are starting to curtail funding in Asia amid weakness in the global economy, worries over China's volatile stock market and talk of a bubble in the U.S.

In a posting on the LinkedIn Corp. social network Thursday by Mr. Ganguly, however, the two founders expressed their particular optimism in startups in Southeast Asia and India due to the large populations and anticipated economic growth in the years to come in the regions.

The World Bank in January said that India, which is home to some 1.3 billion people, will be the world's fastest-growing developing economy until at least 2018. Many Southeast Asian economies are also expanding, and the region is home to some 600 million people.

Across Asia, the proliferation of low-cost smartphones and increasing Internet access mean millions of people have been getting online for the first time.

But in India and Southeast Asia, "current levels of funding still pale in comparison to the U.S. and China," Mr. Ganguly said in his post.

In India, venture-capital investors pumped $736 million into startups in the first quarter of this year, down from $891 million in the first quarter of 2015, according to Hong Kong-based AVCJ Research.

In Singapore, a hub for venture-capital investment in Southeast Asia, funding rose to $199 million in the first quarter of this year from $53.1 million in the first quarter of 2015.

Funding for U.S. startups, by comparison, amounted to $13.9 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource.

Last month, Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said it would pay about $1 billion for a controlling stake in Southeast-Asia focused e-commerce startup Lazada Group, betting on growth in the region.

B Capital Group also said in a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that it had already invested undisclosed amounts in its first two portfolio companies.

One is Ninja Van, a Singapore-based startup that provides e-commerce logistics services in Southeast Asia. The other is Menlo Park, Calif.-based Evidation Health Inc., a digital health and analytics firm.

Mr. Ganguly declined to comment on the size of the Ninja Van and Evidation investments, or on a possible time frame for investing the new funds.

Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell @wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 19, 2016 15:45 ET (19:45 GMT)

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