MONEY TALK: Elevar Equity | Impact Investment

How Elevar Equity choose for its portfolio.

Elevar Equity is an early stage venture fund at the cutting edge of investing in highly scalable businesses focused on low income communities. Elevar has invested in over 22 companies to date that have collectively raised $7 billion of equity and debt and have provided essential services to 18 million customers. With offices in India, Colombia and the US, Elevar has been the founding or first institutional capital in world class companies focused on financial services, education, healthcare and housing.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

• Alleviating poverty
• Creating jobs
• Increasing access to education and improving educational outcomes
• Increasing access to financial services
• Increasing access to healthcare services and improving health
• Providing housing

FOUNDING TEAM

• Founder and Managing Director: Sandeep Farias
• Managing Director: Jyotsna Krishnan
• Chief Investment Officer: Vipul Rawal
• Founder and Managing Director: Johanna Posada
• Founder : Maya Chorengel

THE ELEVAR METHOD

THE FOUR PILLARS

1. Customer

• Focus on needs, priority, challenges, spending pattern and aspiration of low income community.
• Understand the needs and continuosly following the customers.
• Developing a method to formalize the informal sector
• Customers supported by Elevar Equity is self-employed, generally have low income but has a purchasing power to purchase needed goods and services.

2. Entrepreneur

• 15-20 year execution track records
• Ambition to scale and make difference
• Elevar entrepreneurs typically come through proprietary networks that Elevar has cultivated in its years of investing.

3. Business model

• Model should be margin efficient, and custom-built for the target segment.
• Innovate and build a high value and cost efficient distribution channel for customers.
• Deliver affordable products and services. Products should have a real Impact on low income group.
• Value at the customer, community, and shareholder level.

4. Scale

• Massively scalable projects, with affordable solutions.
• Elevar adopts a systematic approach to company’s lifecycle through unit economics, institutional platform and scale.
• Make risk reward calculations, based on the inherent link between customer value, affordable business models, scale and returns.

SERVICES ON OFFER FOR CURATED IDEAS

Elevar Equity assists portfolio companies in areas such as governance, strategy (particularly with respect to customer value), recruitment and organizational development, identification of key operating and financial metrics that help scale a customer-centric organization, and capital-raising. And last but not the least, Elevar serves as a partner through the lonely and challenging moments entrepreneurs inevitably face.