Social Innovation Fund

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The Boston-based Grantham Environmental Trust is part of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. The philanthropic organization was founded in 1997 by entrepreneurs Jeremy Grantham and his wife Hannelore as a private foundation controlled by family members. Grantham is chairman and co-founder of investment management firm GMO. The charitable trust has independent trustees like the CEOs of World Wildlife Fund US and the Rocky Mountain Institute. The trust’s Neglected Climate Opportunities LLC invests in little-funded yet promising climate change prevention technologies. Recent investments include the $12m Series A round of Vence, a US-based producer of a virtual fencing wearable for livestock management in May 2021 and the January 2021 investment round of US sustainable electrofuels producer Infinium.

Axon Partners Group is an international investment, corporate development, alternative asset management and consulting firm. It was formed in 2012 as the result of bringing together two companies founded by Francisco Velázquez six years earlier: Axon Capital, a Spanish venture capital firm and SVP Advisors, a boutique consulting outfit that specialized in media and telecommunications. Axon Partners Group manages five funds across Southern Europe, Latin America and India and is in the midst of launching a multi-sectoral pan-European fund. 

The Craftory is a London-based investment house with a satellite office in San Francisco. Founded in 2018 by retail and media industry veterans Ernesto Schmitt and Ellio Leoni Sceti, the firm has made seven investments in various consumer goods brands. Sceti is also the chairman of London-based family VC firm LSG Holdings, with his brother Patrick as the MD.The Craftory’s $375m fund specializes in building a new investment house of consumer brands, hence its name from the words, “craft" and “factory.” It mainly offers permanent and growth capital to consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. The Craftory supports CPG challenger brands to help them to grow from “craft” businesses to sustainable, mass CPG brands, offering consumers better choices for everyday products.

Based in Sao Paulo, Maya Capital was co-founded in 2018 by Lara Lemann and Mônica Saggioro. The VC manages two funds that invest in early-stage startups in Latin America. The first is worth $26m and the second raised $15m in October 2020. Half of the amount raised will be invested in new startups, while the balance will fund Series A rounds of portfolio startups.Together with co-investors like Kaszek Ventures and Y Combinator, the VC has invested in 25 startups in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. Investments include plant-based foodtech NotCo, the car-rental operator Kovi and online education platform Trybe. Maya aims to increase its portfolio to 35 startups, focusing on post-Covid opportunities in diverse sectors like health, finance, mobility and logistics.

One of China’s most famous angel investors and a prolific speaker, Xu Xiaoping (b.1960) is the managing partner of ZhenFund, a TMT-focused seed fund he founded with close friend and business partner Wang Qiang, in collaboration with Sequoia Capital China, in 2011. Xu began investing in 2006, after the New Oriental Education & Technology Group he co-founded became the first Chinese education company to list on NYSE. Trained as a professional musician, Xu plays the piano, violin, and oboe, and composes music as a hobby. He is also the author of more than 10 books. He studied at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and holds a master's in Music from the University of Saskatchewan.

Founded in 2009, Andreessen Horowitz is based in Menlo Park in California. The numeronym is the first and last letter of the firm’s brand with the characters count in-between. Starting with initial capital of $300m, the VC quickly raised a second venture fund of $650m in 2010 and another worth $1.5bn in 2014. In 2019, a new office was set up in San Francisco.Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the firm has invested in tech pioneers like Skype, Facebook, Groupon and Twitter. Andreessen is the software engineer who pioneered web browser Mosaic and co-founded Netscape. In 1995, Horowitz joined Andreessen as product manager at Netscape that was sold to AOL for $4.2bn in 2016. He also co-founded Opsware (Loudcloud), an automation software company that was sold to Hewlett Packard for $1.6bn in 2007.

Partner of Zhenfund, Wang Qiang (b.1962) co-founded this TMT-focused seed fund with his longtime friend and partner Xu Xiaoping, in collaboration with Sequoia Capital China, in 2011. The angel investor also co-founded NYSE-listed New Oriental Education & Technology Group, where he was executive vice president in charge of teaching and training at Beijing New Oriental School, and Industry vice-president and group chairman. A leading specialist in English-language education in China, Wang has lectured at the English department of Peking University and served as senior consultant to the English channel of China National Radio. He majored in English language and literature at Peking University and holds a master's degree in computer science from the State University of New York. Wang is a lover and collector of antiquarian books.

The investment arm of Taikang Insurance Group, Taikang Asset Management (Taikang Asset) manages RMB 1.9tn worth of assets, including RMB 1.1tn third-party assets, RMB 420bn alternative investment and RMB 440bn pension funds as of June 2020. Investments are mainly in infrastructure sectors such as transportation, energy, utilities, environmental protection, telecoms and real estate.Taikang Asset is an important platform for Taikang Insurance Group to carry out global business. In November 2007, its wholly-owned unit Hong Kong was set up and has received licenses from the Hong Kong stock exchange for businesses including securities dealing, advisory and asset management. In September 2016, Taikang Asset founded Taikang Asset (Beijing), a new equity investment platform, and raised RMB 2bn for its Phase I Industrial Development Fund by May 2017. Apart from managing and utilizing self-owned and insurance capital, the company manages assets for clients and provides advice on asset management. It also issues public security investment funds among other asset management businesses. 

Set up in 2002 by Patrice Hoppenot 15 years after he founded European investment fund BC Partners, Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P) is an impact investor seeking to help SMEs prosper in Africa and create sustainable jobs and income there. With about €210m raised to date, I&P finances SMEs, startups and regional investment funds in Africa through equity participation and loans, as well as through microfinance institutions. Its I&P Acceleration Technologies focuses on digital startups with €2.5m of funding to be invested in 10–15 startups in 2020–2023. To date, I&P has supported more than 100 capital-funded companies and 20 companies benefiting from subsidized acceleration programs. I&P has about 100 staff based in Paris, Washington D.C. and in seven African offices (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Madagascar, Niger and Senegal).

US-French private equity company L Catterton is based in Greenwich, USA, with 17 offices around the world and over $28bn of equity capital. It mostly invests in the consumer industry as well as real estate and technology startups.Founded in 1989 and currently led by co-CEOs Michael Chu and Scott Dahnke, in 2016, L Catterton partnered with the LVMH Group and Groupe Arnault combining Catterton's operations with LVMH and Groupe Arnault's real estate and private equity operations across Europe Asia, and North America. The partnership formed the largest global consumer-focused private equity firm yet the 31st largest private equity firm in the world. L Catterton holds majority stakes in companies like Birkenstock, Crystal Jade, Bliss, John Hardy amongst others; it also invests in technology startups in their growth and hyper-growth phases. Most notable investments include Aleph Farms, ClassPass, and more recently the plant-based products manufacturer NotCo. Its latest growth fund, L Catterton Growth IV, targets an investment range of $10m–$75m in North America and Europe.

Founded and headed by Susan Choe in 2018, Katalyst Ventures is based in San Francisco with a debut fund of $34m raised in 2018. Choe is also a partner at another Zipline investor Visionnaire Ventures (VV) also based in Silicon Valley. Katalyst invests in seed and early-stage tech startups with human-centric solutions. About 45% of the VC funds are invested in startups with women as CEO or CTO.  By February 2020, the Kalatyst portfolio included 22 enterprises and three exits.The founder of Outspark was removed as CEO by the board of directors due to disagreements over the sale of Outspark. She had used her own money in 2006 to create Outspark, a data-driven publishing platform for game developers. Outspark was eventually sold to Axel Springer and Choe went left the company to join Taizo Son’s venture capital group. In 2013, VV was set up to support tech startups in the US. Choe had worked for Yahoo! and also was the COO of the public-listed holding company of South Korean search and media company NHN.

The European Investment Bank is a pan-European investor based in Luxembourg, and the only bank owned by European Union member states. Founded in 1958, the banks has invested in thousands of businesses and public and private infrastructure projects. It is the largest multilateral borrower and lender by volume and also now has an SME tech focus, with recipients needing to have sustainable business model and, usually, a European focus. In December 2020, the EIB launched a new €150m co-investment fund to support startups leveraging AI across Europe to address what it called “the multibillion-euro funding gap compared with the United States and China.” Its most recent investments include a €20m investment in the €32m Series C round of Portuguese international online print store 360imprimir (BIZAY) and its first spacetech investment, €20m in venture debt investment to Luxembourg-based Spire Global that is building a satellite constellation, both in December 2020.In 4Q 2020, it also invested €10m in Spanish industrial IoT startup Worldsensing, €15m in German identity verification platform IDnow and €15 in German sportstech platform KINEXON.

With currently over $21bn of AUM, Baring Private Equity Asia (BPEA) was started in Hong Kong in 1997 by Jean Eric Salata, as the regional Asian PE investment arm of UK-based Baring Private Equity Partners. With $300m in its first fund, it focused on riding China’s economic rise spurred by the country’s market liberalization. In 2000, Salata led a management buyout of BPEA and continues to head the firm today as CEO and Founding Partner. BPEA has invested in more than 100 companies, across healthcare, logistics, IT services, media, education, financial services and retail. It is one of the largest independent PE firms in Asia and has eight offices across the continent.With offices in China, India, Japan, Australia, and Singapore, it currently has around 43 portfolio companies, almost all Asia-based, across multiple business segments in tech and non-tech startups, especially in bricks-and-mortar education establishments. It also makes acquisitions, including most recently of US outsourcing services company Virtusa in February 2021.Other recent investments include in the June 2021 $85m Series C round of Portuguese home physiotherapy tech solution SWORD Health, the world’s fastest-growing musculoskeletal solution, and in the November 2020 $198m Series D round of Chinese computer coding for kids edtech Codemao. 

Startmate is an accelerator program for tech-enabled Australian and New Zealand start-ups. It also operates a seed fund backed by venture capitalists and established entrepreneurs. The organisation was established in 2011 by Niki Scevak, founder of Blackbird Ventures, and a team that included the founders of Australian enterprise software company Atlassian.  Since its inception in 2011, Startmate has invested in more than 150 startups with a combined valuation of more than A$1 billion. Startmate runs two accelerator cohorts a year, usually from January–April and July–October. This accelerator program is open to a wide range of entrepreneurs, from idea-stage groups and pre-Series A startups, to solo founders and complete teams. Companies participating in Startmate’s accelerator program each receive A$75,000 from Startmate’s community of mentors, in exchange for 7.5% equity. In 2019 Startmate launched a dedicated Climate Cohort, which runs parallel with the standard program and focuses on startups in cleantech and climate-tech. Startmate also runs a First Believers program twice a year, which trains future or aspiring angel investors from Australia and New Zealand by building their confidence and networks and refining their investment strategies. In addition, the organization runs a coaching and mentorship program and holds other networking programs, like a Founders’ Fellowship, Women Fellowship, and Student Fellowship, at various dates throughout the year.  

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