Lok Capital Closes $65 Million For Second Fund

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venky natarajan, managing partner, lok capital

Gurgaon: Gurgaon based venture capital firm Lok Capital has made a final close of $65 million as part of its second fund Lok Capital II. The first close of $52 million was made in October 2010 and was targeting $80 million. The fund saw the participation of Proparco and ASN Novib, apart from the existing investors IFC, CDC, KfW, FMO, and responsAbility who have subscribed to the new fund. The firm plans to deploy the investment over the next years across social enterprises across India with a typical investment horizon of four to six years.

“The need for building sustainable enterprises providing access to quality health, education and creating employment opportunities to the BoP is more critical now than ever. Lok Capital is committed to partnering with entrepreneurs who are setting up and running profitable businesses while empowering the BoP”, said Venky Natarajan, Managing Partner, Lok Capital.

The firm’s first fund was a $22 million fund which was fully deployed by 2010. The firm has invested over $25 million into businesses that seek to create a positive socio-economic impact, primarily in the microfinance industry, including Ujjivan, Janalakshmi, Basix, and many others.

The firm’s future investments will focus on enterprises focusing on broader financial inclusion including full service financial institutions, micro-credit, mobile payments, remittances and small business lending. The new fund would also target businesses offering low cost healthcare (at primary and tertiary levels), education (remedial education and content to name a few) and vocational training. A typical investment under Lok Fund II will be in the range $2-4 million range.

Lok Capital was co-founded in 2000 by Rajiv B. Lall, Vishal Mehta, and Donald Peck with a seed fund from the Rockefeller Foundation. It focuses on high potential financial inclusion and broader inclusion enterprises like education, healthcare, livelihood, serving the bottom of pyramid (BOP) segment. The two funds managed by it have a corpus of over $85mn. The firm aims at impact investing; to promote inclusive growth by supporting the development of social enterprises to deliver basic services to serve the BOP segment in a scalable, affordable and commercially viable manner. It seeks to partner with visionary entrepreneurs to help take these social enterprises to new levels of sustainability, scalability and professionalism and thus multiply the ‘impact’ on the BOP segment.