Media coverage of the recently launched IIC-Asha Impact Report, “The India Impact Investing Story (2010-2019): Capital plus Innovation for Impact” launched as part of the Indian Impact Investing Showcase organized on 30th June, 2020. The report is the first comprehensive study on capital flows, business models, and aggregate impact created by the Indian impact investment industry over the last decade. The report was launched by industry veterans including the leadership of IFC, Omidyar Network India, Aavishkar Group, MSDF, Ford Foundation, and Asha Impact.
Media coverage of the recently launched IIC-Asha Impact Report, “The India Impact Investing Story (2010-2019): Capital plus Innovation for Impact” launched as part of the Indian Impact Investing Showcase organized on 30th June 2020. The report is the first comprehensive study on capital flows, business models, and aggregate impact created by the Indian impact investment industry over the last decade. The report was launched by industry veterans including the leadership of IFC, Omidyar Network India, Aavishkar Group, MSDF, Ford Foundation, and Asha Impact.
Media coverage of the recently launched IIC-Asha Impact Report, “The India Impact Investing Story (2010-2019): Capital plus Innovation for Impact” launched as part of the Indian Impact Investing Showcase organized on 30th June 2020. The report is the first comprehensive study on capital flows, business models, and aggregate impact created by the Indian impact investment industry over the last decade. The report was launched by industry veterans including the leadership of IFC, Omidyar Network India, Aavishkar Group, MSDF, Ford Foundation, and Asha Impact.
Automony, a Mumbai based NBFC, engaged in providing financing for used and new vehicles has raised $3 Mn in funding from Asha Impact and Sundaram Finance. The company has so far disbursed over 1500 loans across its 15 branches in Maharashtra and Gujarat and plans to expand its AUM from Rs 70 crore to Rs 500 crore in the next two years. Automony aims to fulfill the entrepreneurial ambitions of first-time truck owners and small fleet operators to boost last mile connectivity.
Adda247, a Delhi-based edtech startup that provides online coaching for government job entrance tests raised $6 Mn in Series B funding led by Infoedge India Ltd and Asha Impact. Sterlite Ventures, which is an existing investor of Adda247 also participated in the latest round. With more than 40 million users on the platform and more than 3 million Daily Active Users (DAU), it is the most used online education platform in India. The edtech startup plans to leverage this funding for expanding to new exam categories, adding new vernacular languages on the platform and amplifying its pan-India presence.
Asha Impact and ANDE hosted their third webinar on blended finance as part of the webinar series “Demystifying Blended Finance” to bridge the knowledge gap around blended finance instruments. The webinar on Masala Bonds brought together experts from Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, UBS and Deloitte in an engaging conversation to share the suitability of this instrument to scale the impact of small and growing businesses.
Agriculture tech startup Gramophone has raised 24 crores from impact investors Asha Impact and Better Capital along with existing investor InfoEdge, among others. Gramophone provides actionable agronomic insights coupled with last-mile delivery of quality agriculture inputs to farmers, through a smartphone app and a call center.
Nepra Resource Management Pvt. Ltd, a waste management company that operates under the ‘Let’s Recycle’ brand, has raised Rs 44 crore ($6.5 million) in its Series B round of funding. The funds were raised from existing impact investor Aavishkaar and new impact investor Asha Impact, Nepra said in a statement.
Aavishkaar, the impact fund advisory firm and part of the Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group, and Asha Impact, an impact investment and policy advocacy platform for Indian business leaders set up by Vikram Gandhi and Pramod Bhasin, invested Rs. 44 crores as part of the Series-B round of equity investment raised by Nepra Resource Management Private Ltd, an Ahmedabad-based waste aggregation and processing company that operates under the ‘Let’s Recycle’ brand.
Ahmedabad-based Nepra to use the funding from Aavishkaar and Asha Impact to expand its operations to 3 more cities and build the foundation for expansion across the country over the next 5 years, says CEO Sandeep Patel
With initiatives such as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, regulatory push on solid waste management regulations and Extended Producer Responsibility, there is large demand for organised waste management enterprises who can process at scale and provide reliable waste management services.
Impact investment and policy advocacy platform Asha Impact has exited its stake in Bengaluru-based NBFC Varthana, clocking steady returns on the investment made less than three years ago.
Investment banker Vikram Gandhi and former chief executive officer of IT services major Genpact, Pramod Bhasin, struck a multi-bagger exit from Bengaluru-based school finance company Thirumeni Finance Pvt. Ltd, which operates under the Varthana brand.
Impact investment and policy advocacy platform Asha Impact has exited its stake in Bengaluru-based NBFC Varthana, clocking steady returns on the investment made less than three years ago. The sale of its minority stake in Varthana to private equity firm ChrysCapital Advisors and some of the other existing investors has fetched Asha Impact a return of over five times on its investment of Rs 4 crore made in 2015, thus accruing it well over Rs 20 crore, according to people familiar with the deal.
ChrysCapital Advisors Llp, the largest home-grown private equity (PE) fund, has acquired a significant minority stake in Thirumeni Finance Pvt. Ltd, a Bengaluru-based non-banking financial company (NBFC) that operates under the name Varthana, according to senior executive.
Investors are upbeat about the prospects of the million-dollar (by annual revenues) company. “Saahas is one of the few enterprises in the Indian waste management space to have a scalable business model,” says Vikram Gandhi, founder, Asha Impact, an impact fund that invested an undisclosed sum in the venture last year. “The company is on track to achieve profitability.”
Neha Juneja and Ankit Mathur were batchmates at Delhi College of Engineering between 2002 and 2006. After their first venture, Aisapaisa.com, a portal that provided futures and options prices, went bust during the 2008 financial crisis, they began exploring business opportunities in everyday problems.The company has sold about 8 lakh units of its biomass stoves made of steel and aluminum that emit 70 percent less smoke and consume about 50 percent less fuel than conventional mud variants across India and South America. The company clocked ?25 crore in revenue in FY17.
Bengaluru-based school finance company Varthana has raised $3 million in funding from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to expand its school transformation program (STP). The programme is aimed at improving the quality of learning in private schools by extending credit facilities.
Vastu Housing Finance is trying to leverage technology to establish and distinguish itself.
Names like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, Instacart, and Reddit are among the billion-dollar companies that were incubated by Y Combinator at an early stage. Since 2005, Y Combinator, a California-based seed accelerator, has funded over 1,400 startups, which today have a combined valuation of over $80 billion.
We will continue to do more of the same, which is very early-stage or seed-stage investing in businesses that are serving the masses or are serving large numbers of low-income population,” says Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, Partner, Unitus Seed Fund, a seed-stage venture fund based in Bengaluru.
At the age of 9 or 10, when most children were busy playing cricket or football on weekends, Vikram Gandhi taught English to 5- to -6 year-olds at an orphanage at Byculla in Mumbai called Asha Daan. It was during those days that the concept of community service got embedded in his impressionable mind.
On New Year’s Eve, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a set of populous measures to boost the real estate sector especially the affordable housing category. But lowering of interest rate is not the only driver in boosting the much-talked affordable housing category, but it equally needs innovation in land allocation and design and technology.
In early 2015, when Unitus Seed Fund announced it would invest in Bengaluru-based startup BetterPlace Safety Solutions, it was another indication that the fund, an impact investment pioneer in India, was ready to ramp up its footprint in the country.
According to the Impact Investors Council, the biggest gap in impact investing in India is the lack of funding from domestic investors. The Council estimates that 80-85 percent of impact investments come from overseas.
Future Generali India Life Insurance has recently added a new partner to further grow its Credit Life business. The Company has entered into an agreement with Vastu Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. to offer group credit life insurance through one of its products – Future Generali Loan Suraksha Plan.
Historians will tell you that an explosion of creativity occurs the moment the world starts complaining that there is nothing left to invent or that the search for solutions to complex problems has come to an end.
What do Anshu Jain, Jaspal Bindra, Gunit Chadha and Pramod Bhasin have in common? They are all global bankers from India. Right? Yes, they have all been high-profile bankers and now they want to dabble in the affordable housing loans segment.
Accion Venture Lab said Nov. 14 that it sold its stake in Varthana. Bangalore-based Varthana provides specialized loans and support to private schools in India. Varthana raised $14 million in Series B financing in the spring.
For about 3 billion of the world’s poorest people, the simple act of cooking dinner is fraught with risk. They burn wood, charcoal, dung or crop waste, often on open fires, fouling the air they breathe.
In more ways than one, 31-year-old Neha Juneja stands out. The co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Greenway Grameen is intelligent, unassuming and sensitive, something one rarely finds in one single person.
Chennai-based housing finance company Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance Pvt. Ltd has raised an undisclosed amount from a group of investors including Zephyr Peacock, Omidyar Network, Aavishkar Goodwill in a Series B round, a top company executive told VCCircle.
India’s roughly Rs.10 trillion mortgage market is witnessing a quiet revolution. Even though it has been growing at around 18-19% every year, the size of the market continues to be pretty small—a minuscule portion of India’s gross domestic product—but the interesting development is that around one-third of the new home loans, in terms of units, has started flowing into the low-cost housing segment, where the size of a loan is less than Rs.10 lakh.
Sarfaraz Iraque is among the hundreds of thousands of students who aspire to clear the country’s coveted entrance exams to enter the elite Indian Institutes of Technology. The 18-year-old is not among the thousands who made it through.
Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance Co., an Indian company providing housing loans to the poor, won The Wall Street Journal’s competition on achievements in financial inclusion.
Bangalore-based non-banking finance company (NBFC) Thirumeni Finance Pvt Ltd that operates under the banner of Varthana and lends to affordable private schools, has raised Rs 93 crore ($14 million) in its Series B round of financing led by Kaizen Private Equity and Zephyr Peacock India, as per a company statement.
Varthana, a nonbanking finance company (NBFC) that provides debt financing and solutions to private schools that enrol students from lowincome families, has secured Rs 93 crore ($14 million) in Series-B funds from a clutch of investors led by Kaizen Private Equity and Zephyr Peacock India.
NDTV Prime has launched ‘The Real Deal’, a television show and 360 degree media property on impact investing and social entrepreneurship. The show will premiere on March 24, 2016 and will be aired every Friday at 9 pm, March 25 onwards. From waste managers, skills development, financial and meal visionaries to farmers and healthcare managers, the contestants will fight it out in a set of innovative challenges that will test skills required to be a social entrepreneur.
Between 2011 and 2012, when Neha Juneja and Ankit Mathur, Co-founders of Greenway Grameen Infra’s Smart Stove, were trying to sell their product in the market and to investors, they were met with a lot of scepticism. Neha recalls,
More and more people are becoming familiar with the related concepts of impact investing and social entrepreneurship. These ideas are commanding increasing attention in business, academia and government, and also among the public at large, with hundreds of articles and dozens of research studies.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is Ayush Sharma’s favourite book. “It reminds me of one of the most important lessons in my life, that I should always pursue my goals and destiny, and engage in the quest of greater purpose and fulfilment,” he shares.
Aasaanjobs’ fund-raising journey has been a bit different so far from most impact start-ups. Last January, the Mumbai-based company picked up $1.5 million in seed capital from Inventus Capital Partners and IDG Ventures India. Both are mainstream venture capital firms and generally don’t back businesses that focus on consumers at the bottom half of the pyramid.
Mumbai-based biomass cooking stove maker Greenway Appliances has secured $2.5 million as part of a Series A round of funding from former Genpact CEO Pramod Bhasin and others, according to a report by The Economic Times.
Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) has led a Rs 33.1 crore (around $5 million) round of funding in Delhi-based test prep startup Avanti Learning Centres. Avanti will use the funds to expand its centres and to develop its curriculum and technology.
Mumbai-based test prep startup Avanti Learning Centres has secured Rs 33.1 crore in third round of funding led by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation along with Asha Impact and existing co-investors Ted Dintersmith and Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF).
Local private equity fund Multiples Alternatives, along with a clutch of former senior bankers, will invest over Rs 100 crore in Mumbai-based housing finance firm Vastu Housing Finance Corp to own 95% stake in the start-up firm relaunched by senior bankers.
Is it possible to thrive financially, while benefiting society? Investors seem to be warming up to this idea, but very slowly.
