Southeast Asia’s tech sector is in a slump—but one VC sees signs that ‘things will work out quite well here in the long run’

Southeast Asia’s start-up scene is just getting started.

As Arun Pai, a principal at Singapore-based Monk’s Hill Ventures pointed out at last week’s Fortune Innovation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, the region’s tech sector is a decade younger than India’s, two decades behind China, and five decades behind Silicon Valley.

After a flurry of optimistic dealmaking a few years ago, Southeast Asia’s tech sector is now in a slump. Funding has dried up. High-profile failures, like Indonesia’s eFishery, have also cooled sentiment across the region.

Then there’s the fact that most Southeast Asian economies are still in a very early stage of development. “Countries like Indonesia and Vietnam have very low GDP per capita, which means the willingness to buy your product or service is still extremely challe