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About Orbit Startups

Orbit helps scale breakthrough startups from around the globe across emerging and frontier markets.

About Orbit

Orbit Startups helps scale breakthrough companies across emerging and frontier markets in Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Orbit invests through its fund SOSV, a US-based venture capital firm with US$1.5 billion in assets under management. Notable investments include VideoVerse, technology partner to the Olympics and the UK’s Premier League; fintech pioneer BitMEX; ELSA Speak, Google Gradient’s first investment in Asia; MarketForce, Africa’s leading merchant marketplace; and Dastgyr, Pakistan’s aspiring Alibaba Group.

William Bao Bean

Managing General Partner at Orbit Startups

Long BIO:

William is Managing General Partner at Orbit Startups, the first and longest running startup program in Asia and a Venture Partner at SOSV, the #4 most active venture capital investor in the world and #5 Asia/Rest Of World (2021, PitchBook) with US$1.5B in assets under management. Orbit provides hands-on support for growth, partnerships, fundraising and user acquisition combined with an initial investment package and millions available in follow-on funding from SOSV. Our focus is on digitalization across emerging and frontier markets to drive efficiency in ecommerce, fintech, media, health, education, and logistics. Orbit’s consumer ecosystem has helped our startups scale to 153 million monthly active smartphone users. William joined Orbit and SOSV from SingTel Innov8 Ventures where he was a founding Managing Director supporting China investments. Prior to that William was a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, a VC backed by Softbank and Cisco, leading investments in China and South East Asia. William started his career in equity research most recently with Deutsche Bank where he was a top ranked analyst for Asia Internet and China Tech, Media and Telecom and worked on the IPOs for Alibaba, Kingsoft, eLong (Expedia China), OnMobile, Rediff and Infoedge Naukri. In 2005, he was ranked #3 stock picker in China/Hong Kong and #1 for Technology, Media and Telecom by Thomson Reuters Starmine. In 2006 he was ranked #3 equity research analyst in Asia for Software and IT Services by Institutional Investor Magazine for his work on China Internet. William has done over 300 early stage investments including BitMex in blockchain, UShopal in ecommerce, Snapask in edtech, italki in edtech, Carota in mobility, Flickstree in media, ELSA Speak in edtech, Tappytoon in media, Coutloot in ecommerce, and Dastgyr in fintech. He currently sits on the board of directors of Supplynote, Scantrust, Boost Capital, Pandabus, Fleksy, Goama, italki, and SRT as well as non-profit Blair Academy. He holds a BA from Bowdoin College.

SHORT BIO:

William is Managing General Partner at Orbit Startups, the first and longest running startup program in Asia and a Venture Partner at SOSV, the #4 most active venture capital investor in the world and #5 in Asia/Rest Of World (2021, PitchBook) with US$1.5bn in assets under management. Orbit provides hands-on support for growth, partnerships, fundraising and user acquisition combined with an initial investment and follow-on funding. Orbit helps scale breakthrough startups from around the globe across emerging and frontier markets in Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas in ecommerce, fintech, media, health, education, and logistics. William was previously at SingTel Innov8 Ventures where he was a founding Managing Director supporting China investments, a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings leading investments in China and South East Asia and an equity research analyst most recently with Deutsche Bank where he was a top ranked analyst for Internet in Asia.

Oscar Ramos

Managing General Partner at Orbit Startups

Oscar Ramos is a Venture Partner at SOSV ($1.5B AUM), where he is Managing General Partner at Orbit Startups, a program dedicated to scaling breakthrough companies from emerging and frontier markets in Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. A “full-stack innovator” with expertise ranging from product design to corporate strategy, Oscar built and led his own micro-fund investing in early-stage Chinese startups prior to joining SOSV. He began his career in the corporate sector working in R&D with Ericsson and Telefonica in deep-tech applications including mobile network protocols, cybersecurity and bio-technology. He holds a Masters of Engineering in Telecommunication from UPM in Madrid.