Seattle, USA- and Bangalore, India-based Unitus Seed Fund (USF) has raised over $8m in commitments for its seed-stage venture capital fund focused on accelerating startups serving low-income consumers in India.
Founding investors of the fund include:
– Mike Murray (co-founder of microfinance pioneer, Unitus Labs),
– Jeff Clark,
– Vinod Khosla (Founder, Khosla Ventures and Khosla Impact),
– 500 Startups,
– Bob Gay (Formerly Huntsman-Gay and Bain Capital),
– T.V. Mohandas Pai (Chairman of Aarin Capital Partners), and
– Dr. Ranjan Pai (CEO of Manipal Education and Medical Group).
Led by Dave Richards, Managing Partner, USF specializes in investing in for-profit scalable companies that will provide economic self-reliance, education, and basic necessities to millions of low-income people living at the base of the economic pyramid (“BoP”). The fund, which has already invested in Hippocampus Learning Centers (read here), Milaap (read here), Bodhicrew Services (read here) and Villgro Innovation Marketing, intends to make ten new investments in 2013, and 10-12 per year going forward.
FinSMEs
04/01/2013