Robeco has launched the Next Digital Billion Fund, an emerging markets technology trend strategy, in anticipation of the next wave of global internet users from developing economies.

The product invests primarily in publicly-listed local high-growth internet and technology companies across emerging markets, including innovative internet platforms that it believes are tomorrow’s technology winners.

Currently, the world has roughly 4.6 billion internet users with the future majority of users living in emerging markets. This rise in internet connectivity combined with a lack of pre-existing offline commercial infrastructure is leading to exponential leaps in technology adoption and business model growth. Thousands of new businesses are being created to cater to the next billion internet users, resulting in a wave of IPOs and value creation.

Robeco’s Next Digital Billion equity strategy aims to benefit from this massive trend. It will pursue a high-conviction, benchmark-agnostic strategy with a portfolio of between 30 and 50 companies, diversifying within selected stocks across various sectors and geographies in order to optimize the strategy’s overall risk-return profile.

The Robeco Next Digital Billion strategy is managed by Michiel van Voorst and Bryan Satterly, and a wider team with decades of investment experience in emerging markets and technology.

Mark van der Kroft, CIO Fundamental and Quant Equity at Robeco said: “Robeco’s pioneering experience in both emerging market and trends & thematic investing is at the core of the Next Digital Billion strategy. We are excited to be providing our clients with a unique investment strategy which has the potential to result in tremendous amounts of value for investors over the coming decades.”