Venture investments play a crucial role in our work to grow social impact investment and improve people’s lives in the UK. We invest in venture capital fund managers who bring the right values and skills to find and back a diverse range of impact startups. These technology focused companies have the potential to change people's lives through the products and services they deliver, while their business models can allow them to scale rapidly and reach more people, more effectively.
We are delighted to continue our partnership with Ananda Impact Ventures, who have successfully raised a fourth fund to invest in seed and series A high impact startups across the UK and Europe. We first invested with Ananda in their third fund in 2018. Three years on, the Ananda team have made progress in scaling enterprises, and in scaling themselves, with its fourth Core Impact Fund closing at €65 million, making it one of the largest social impact venture funds to date.
Ananda’s core requirement is for impact to be inherent to investee business models. The more revenue, the more social impact is generated in lock-step. To achieve this, Ananda looks for innovations in areas of systemic demand that are currently ill-served, with prospects for transformative impact and sustainable long-term growth. This is centred on more regulated and complex markets including healthcare, education, sustainability and financial inclusion, where patient capital and long-term commitment are critical to success.
Ananda’s past investments include, Open Bionics which is on a mission to ‘turn disabilities into superpowers’, by building and developing the next generation of bionic limbs for limb-different children, and Ieso Digital Health, which delivers flexible online therapy for people across the UK.
We are excited to see the new companies that Ananda helps to scale with its fourth Core Impact Fund. We also look forward to working with Ananda to showcase good impact measurement and management in a rapidly evolving venture market.
