Profit in mind, impact investment funds eye new economy

By Taslima Khan

NEW DELHI: Impact investment funds, or those that look for a social impact along with financial returns in their investments, are turning their attention to profit-focused new economy ventures that can scale fast.

Top impact funds such as Aavishkaar and Unitus are increasingly looking at techenabled ventures that hold the promise of creating jobs at the lower rung of the pyramid.

“While our earlier focus on healthcare and education businesses remains the same, over the last two years, we are also scouting for deals in the new economy businesses,“ said Will Poole, managing partner at Unitus Seed Fund.

“Any company we invest in needs to have the capabilities of touching the lives of 1,00,000 families within five years. These numbers are not hard to achieve in new economy businesses which are driven by tech-enabled plat forms,“ he said.

Unitus has recently invested in multiple new-economy focused companies including DriveU, which provides driver-on-demand services, and Gurgaon-based laundry services startup OneClickWash.

The firm also invested an undisclosed amount in Bengaluru-based digital verification solutions provider BetterPlace founded by Pravin Agarwala, former global head (cloud ERP development) at SAP, and Uday Singh, group chief executive officer at SIS Group.