Unitus Seed Fund
| File:Unitus Seed Fund logo.jpg | |
| Company type | Venture capital firm |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founders | Will Poole (Founding Partner) Dave Richards (Founding Partner) |
| Headquarters | |
Area served | Indian states |
| AUM | USD 50 million |
| Website | http://usf.vc |
Unitus Seed Fund is a leading impact venture fund investing in startups innovating for the masses in India.[1] It provides seed funding and supports companies that have the potential to scale and benefit the masses through the services they provide and/or through innovative business models. It’s investment focus areas are healthcare, education, consumer services and financial technology.
Based in Bangalore and Seattle, Washington[2][3], Unitus Seed Fund was founded in 2012 to help startups prepare for growth via seed funding, strategic and operating support, providing critical connections and securing growth capital. On the back of success in its first fund of USD 23 million, Unitus Seed Fund is now raising its second fund with a targeted corpus of USD 50 million.[4].
Unitus Seed Fund is backed by marquee Indian and global investors.
History
Unitus Seed Fund is part of the Unitus Group, a premier global financial services group, founded in 2000. Unitus Group was started with the strategy of leveraging business principles and market mechanisms in order to have a long-term, sustainable and widespread impact on reducing global poverty. Towards the same, Unitus supported the setup of multiple independently managed ventures with high quality teams to focus on being catalysts in their respective areas of focus.
Unitus Seed Fund was initiated as a pilot initiative by Unitus Group in October 2011, with a belief that many of the next great ideas for realizing poverty impact on large scale are going to come from entrepreneurs creating startups with new disruptive models and systems which are intended to be for-profit businesses. In the summer of 2012, Unitus Seed Fund spun out of Unitus Group as a separate venture investment management company and fund in order to scale-up investing operations.
Unitus Group has also supported the following ventures – Unitus Equity Fund (2005), Unitus Capital (2008) and Unitus Impact (2011).
Investors
Indian Investors of Unitus Seed Fund include T V Mohandas Pai (Chairman of Manipal Global Education and Former Member of the Board of Directors of Infosys Limited), Dr. Ranjan Pai (CEO and MD of the Manipal Education and Medical Group) and Hemendra Kothari (Non-Executive Chairman of DSP BlackRock Investment Managers Limited). Global Fund Institutional Investors include Crystal Springs Foundation, Lemelson Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Deshpande Foundation, Wadhwani Foundation, Sorenson Impact Foundation and Unitus Labs. Individual Investors include Bill Gates (Co-Founder of Microsoft and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Jeff Clark (Impact Investment Leaders), Vinod Khosla (Partner, Khosla Ventures), Hari Kumar (Founder and CEO, Lionrock Capital), Steve Singh (Chief Executive Officer, Concur and Member, SAP Global Managing Board), Diego Piacentini (Former Senior Vice President, International Consumer Business, Amazon.com), Geeta Aiyer (President and Founder of Boston Common Asset Management), Bob Gay (Co-Founder of Unitus Group) and more.
Portfolio
Since 2012, Unitus Seed Fund has invested in 21 Indian startups across education, healthcare, financial technology and consumer services –
Education
- Hippocampus Learning Centres - Affordable quality kindergarten centres and tutoring for rural India
- Cuemath - Disrupting the K8 tuitions market with micro-franchised learning programs
- Curiositi - Science activity kits for students from Grades 3-10 to make learning more effective
- LabInApp - Mobile apps that create a 3D virtual lab for science experiments for school kids
- iSTAR - Training and employability services for undergraduate college students
Healthcare
- UE LifeSciences Inc. - Affordable breast cancer screening services to enable early disease detection for all
- AddressHealth - Comprehensive paediatric care network through school outreach and primary clinics
- Welcare Health Systems - Preventing blindness through low cost tele-ophthalmology services
- Smile Merchants - Affordable dental care for Tier 2 and 3 towns in urban, semi-urban and rural India
Financial Technology
- Milaap - Online platform for social-focused crowdfunding and micro-lending
Consumer Services
- BetterPlace Safety Solutions - Technology driven “Safety As a Service” provider
- Blowhorn - Uber model for intra-city mini-truck deliveries
- OneClickWash - Organized end-to-end home laundry service
- DriveU - Mobile-first, on-demand personal driver service
- Urban Tailor - Organized tailoring services for women’s garments
- Jack On Block (Exited) - Home and small business facility services
- mGaadi (Exited) - SaaS service provider for fleet operators
Agriculture
- VillFarm Agrisolutions - Sustainable agri-products company
Retails and E-commerce
- Caravan Craft - Handcrafted global woman’s fashion and home décor with luxury quality and affordable prices
- GoCoop - Leading online marketplace for co-operatives and community-based enterprises
- Jiffstore (Exited) - M-Commerce solution for small shops
See also
References
- ^ "Company Overview of Unitus Labs". Businessweek. Feb 4, 2013. Retrieved Feb 5, 2013.
- ^ About us usf.vc.
- ^ Unitus Seed Fund Unitus Labs
- ^ "Unitus launches second fund of $50 million, to fund 50 startups". Times of India. April 25, 2016. Retrieved Sep 5, 2016.