The ‘secret sauce’ of impact investing

Transcript:

Liz Skinner [00:00:03] Welcome to Three Questions, I’m Liz Skinner, and with me today is Eva Yazhari, she is general partner of Beyond Capitol Ventures, a women led Emerging Markets Impact Venture Fund. It’s a spinoff of her Beyond Capital Fund, which has a 10 year track record and a portfolio of health care distribution, finance and agriculture investments. The fund’s portfolio companies have helped more than 16 million people in East Africa and India, and it’s also generated 10 million in revenue. Thank you for joining us today, Eva.

Eva Yazhari [00:00:37] Thank you, Liz. It’s so great to be here with you.

Liz Skinner [00:00:39] So tell us a little bit about some of the impact that you’re Beyond Capital Fund has had. And maybe tell us about one of the portfolio companies.

Eva Yazhari [00:00:50] So when I left Wall Street, I set out to invest in purpose driven companies, companies that had impact baked into their business models in emerging markets in India, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. As you mentioned, we’ve had an impact on 16 million people with our portfolio of 14 investments. We know that every dollar we have invested has impacted twenty eight lives. So we’re not trading off financial return and social impact. One of my I don’t want to say favorite, but I said favorite companies in the portfolio. But I think one of the more dynamic companies in the portfolio is Kasha. Kasha is a women’s health company based out of East Africa. It’s a Trojan horse for women’s health, addressing the challenges of women’s health just being extremely taboo in the markets where we invest, it provides access to feminine sanitation, to contraceptives, as well as to soap, lotions and candles, which are the products of the women really enjoy buying. But what they really come back for are the true women’s health products. Every month the company has spent has sold over a million products. They are almost quadrupling their their revenue in twenty twenty one. They’ve been instrumental in thinking not only about their customers, about their employees employing a female workforce, as well as working with the government and becoming the first of our online pharmacy in the country of Rawanda. So there true what I would call conscious company, led by a conscious leader, a female founder that we’ve been really proud to back.

Liz Skinner [00:02:24] Now, tell us a little bit about Beyond Capital Ventures. How big is it? And I understand you’re still raising some money for it. So tell us a little bit about kind of what its goals are and what types of businesses it will seek to support.

Eva Yazhari [00:02:39] So we are still raising and we have first closed. And our goal is to be a seed in series A investor across about twenty one companies in the portfolio that would be across our two regions, East Africa and India, and still focusing on three core verticals health care, financial inclusion and agriculture. We also look at impact themes across the portfolio. Since impact is a critical part of our strategy and those are gender, distribution and livelihoods, the fundamental strategy is truly to invest and need to have and companies that are led by conscious leaders. We define a conscious leader as a leader who’s thinking about all stakeholders, and we believe that conscious leaders are the secret sauce to impact investing, impact driven venture capital investments. And so that is our strategy. We are very excited to have our first investment on the horizon. I can’t say much more about it, but it will be in the health care space and we will be continuing to deploy capital as we reach towards the final close this fall with our offering to investors,

which is intended to be diversified. It is intended to manage the risk of the markets that we invest in, but it is also intended to generate a double bottom line for our investors.

Liz Skinner [00:03:59] And tell us a little bit about maybe a couple of the macro trends that your funds are attempting to address and pull in.

Eva Yazhari [00:04:11] Well, over the next 10 years, we are targeting a market size of one point seven billion people in both India and East Africa who lack access to affordable private solutions and two essentials. That’s, as I mentioned, health care, financial inclusion, as well as agriculture. And we also look at energy access occasionally in the portfolio as well as waste solutions. One of the stats that really stands out to me is that seventy seven percent of small and medium sized enterprises in Africa alone generate generate the majority of the jobs. And so they’re the ones who create employment, who create economic development, and by providing goods and services to small and medium sized enterprises and also investing in them, we are able to help spur social growth, to spur social impact in the countries where we invest. Some of the other macro trends are rising middle class, their population growth, the countries where we invest have very high levels of millennials and Gen Z generations. So very, very high levels of youth who are able to who are highly educated and able to go out into the workforce and innovate and start their own businesses and then increase demand for essential goods and services themselves. We also see a lot of technology assisted solutions which help our markets and help our sectors grow and scale simply because technology is what’s needed to leapfrog in many ways to get money to people that only have a cell phone to get access to the goods and services that the people, we the consumers that that we aim to target just basically lack.

Liz Skinner [00:06:06] Great. Well, thanks very much for joining us to tell us about the fun and good luck.

Eva Yazhari [00:06:10] Thank you. This has been an incredible opportunity. Thank you so much.