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Unitus Ventures Records 95% YoY Impact Growth in 2016

Written by Capria Admin
March 21, 2017

Investments impacted over 842,000 BoP lives with education, healthcare, financial services and livelihoods

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21 March 2017, Bangalore: Unitus Ventures, India’s leading impact venture fund investing in early-stage startups innovating for the masses, today released its annual fund and portfolio impact report for 2016. As of 31 December 2016, Unitus Ventures’s portfolio has directly impacted over 842,000 BoP (Base of the economic Pyramid) lives across 29 states in India, registering a 95 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth. Portfolio companies have created over 7,800 jobs, of which 46 per cent are BoP employees.

Unitus Ventures has adopted an all-inclusive approach for its portfolio companies – providing seed capital, strategic and operational support, helping secure growth capital and intensifying mentor-advisor network by finding the right business partners and customers. Portfolio companies have cumulatively raised 4.61 times the investment made by Unitus Ventures in follow-on investments.  From an ecosystem perspective, Unitus Ventures and portfolio companies have together, onboarded 74 advisors and 26 strategic partners.

“Following our original seed investment, 10 portfolio companies have raised Series A and 2 have raised Series B funding,” said Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, Partner at Unitus Ventures. “Their continued growth and advancement are robust indicators that our investees’ highly scalable, profitable solutions are effectively addressing India’s low-income consumer needs across diverse sectors.”

Since founding in 2013, Unitus Ventures has adopted a well-defined methodology of tracking and advancing portfolio companies’ progress, across three categories, all of which are measured across company, sector and fund levels, using industry standard IRIS metrics –

  • Social (Scale) – Portfolio companies are selected to have the potential to impact at least 100,000 BoP families through their products and services, and/or directly provide BoP individuals 1,000 new and better jobs through the formal economy across India in 5 years. By the end of 2016, over 842,000 BoP lives have been impacted and close to 3,600 BoP jobs have been created.
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  • Financial – Portfolio companies are on a path to financial sustainability through increased revenues and raising additional capital, enabling them to thrive and scale. Portfolio companies have raised a total of $43.5 million in follow-on capital which is 4.61x Unitus Ventures’s initial funding as of December 2016.
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  • Ecosystem – Portfolio companies are continually engaged with local and global network of advisors, skilled service providers and strategic partners such that every company benefits from, influences, and accelerates the functioning of the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. 74 advisors and 26 strategic partners have connected with Unitus Ventures’s portfolio companies.

In its first Fund of USD $23 million, Unitus made a total of 23 investments across education, healthcare, financial technology, retail and e-commerce, and mobile and consumer sectors. Unitus Ventures is currently raising its second fund of INR 300 crore (USD$45 million) and plans to deploy it in across 25 – 30 startups in education, healthcare and financial technology over the next 3-4 years.

Read our 2016 Impact Report here >
Read all our previous years’ Impact Reports here >

About Unitus Ventures

Unitus Ventures is the leading impact venture fund investing in businesses innovating for the masses in India. Unitus invests in sectors including healthcare, education and financial technology. Unitus Ventures is backed by leading individual, family office, and foundation investors in the USA and India. Unitus Ventures is part of the Unitus Group, a premier financial services group operating in India and other emerging markets since 2000. Unitus Ventures is based in Bangalore and is a member of the Capria Network.

More about Unitus Ventures >

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Unitus Ventures, a leading venture capital firm in India, is joining forces with its US affiliate Capria Ventures, a Global South specialist, to operate with a unified global strategy under a single brand, Capria Ventures.