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December 17, 2013 11:06 pm GMT

Unitus Raises New $3.3M Fund To Back Startups That Fight Poverty In India

istar-training-class-640x480Unitus Seed Fund, which invests in for-profit startups in India to help people at the bottom of the economic pyramid access basic necessities, has raised its second fund of $3.3 million. The new fund, called Unitus Seed Fund India, has been approved by India’s market watchdog SEBI to raiseup to $9-12 million from local investors, making it the first such seed-stage impact fund in the country. The new fund comes at a time when India’s wealthy, first generation technology entrepreneurs and senior executives are actively seeking ways to contribute to their society. Unitus announced that former Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan along with former Asia head of Khosla Venture Advisory Services, Atul Bindal, are joining the new India fund to oversee its investment decisions. Among the fund’s founding investors are ‘Bala’ V. Balakrishnan, board member of the country’s second biggest software company Infosys, T.V. Mohandas Pai (co-founder of Aarin Capital) and Ranjan Pai (CEO of Manipal Education and Medical Group). Since January this year,Unitus Seed Fund has invested in nine startups in the areas of healthcare, education and livelihood. Engineers in India are making a solid living but exist in a parallel world where millions live on less than $5 a day. Clearly, there is an opportunity to combine all India’s engineering and entrepreneurial talent to solve the problems of providing affordable education, healthcare and other technology-enabled services. Unitus is not the only fund helping startups fight poverty in India. Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Impact Fund, has been investing in Indian startups focused on solving the local problems. Last year, Vinod Khosla established Khosla Labs, a technology product incubator based in India’s tech capital Bangalore, tocreate products that will help the country’s poor access formal banking services and even empower smaller grocery shops with software solutions to compete better with large, organized retailers. Will Poole, co-founder and managing partner of Unitus Seed Fund, said by involving domestic investors in backing these startups, a lot more could be achieved. Unitus defines this market as thebase of the economic pyramid, or BoP,in India. “We anticipate investing in up to 40 of these BoP Startups over the next 4 years. There is a dearth of seed capital in this segment of the market, making the investment opportunities very attractive,” Poole said. Unitus also announced two fresh investments along with the new fund. They are: GoCoop Solutions – provides a social marketplace for co-operatives and

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