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Venture Capital is Broken – Here’s How to Fix It: A Q&A with Village Capital President Ross Baird
Venture capital investors are often backing the wrong ideas for the wrong reasons, hoping to strike it rich by dumping billions into frivolous apps that benefit only a wealthy sliver of the world’s population. Meanwhile, innovative solutions to pressing global challenges go underfunded. That's the thesis of Village Capital president Ross Baird, which he expresses in a new book. NextBillion editor Sonya Vann DeLoach discusses the book's message with Baird in this interview.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Blended Finance Gets a $500 Million Boost: Convergence CEO Discusses Groundbreaking Partnership with IFC
US $2.5 trillion: That’s the estimated funding gap the world needs to close in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. To achieve this daunting goal, says Convergence CEO Joan Larrea, “We need to tap into new sources of capital, particularly from private investors” – a goal Convergence advances by connecting, educating and supporting investors to execute blended finance transactions. This approach recently got a half billion dollar shot in the arm; our interview with Larrea reveals how.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
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Zurich Insurance ups ‘impact investment’ target to $5 billion
The target forms part of a move by insurers to tackle the causes of climate change and other social issues for which they often pick up the bill, including healthcare costs associated with tobacco use.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
- Tags
- impact investing
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Press release: Dana K. Bezerra Named President of Heron Foundation
Bezerra offers a breadth of experience that spans the philanthropic and for-profit sectors. She joined Heron in 2006 and has been responsible for deal-sourcing, identifying and developing relationships across a spectrum of investors, syndicating capital when possible, and cultivating opportunities to deploy the full range of Heron’s “toolbox” (including grants, program related investments, and market-rate mission related investments).
- Categories
- Investing
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Impact Investing Can Be Profitable, New Report Says
Throughout the industry’s development, however, some investors have questioned the ability of impact investments to generate financial returns similar to traditional investments, and lack of data has left this question unanswerable. Now a new report from the Global Impact Investing Network looks to recent research that it says has shed valuable light on what are appropriate and achievable financial performance expectations.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing
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Press release: China consolidates position as global leader on green finance, says new research
The report finds that China – which put green finance on the G20 agenda during its 2016 presidency – is following through on its political commitment to boost the financing required to do this. The report looks particularly at progress since the State Council in August 2016 approved a set of recommendations for action on greening China’s financial system.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Viewpoint: Impact funds not scaling fast enough in India
There isn’t any doubt that impact investors such as Aavishkaar have made tremendous progress over the past decade since venture capital as an asset class returned in earnest to this market. Over the last seven years, 2010-2016, impact investors have put $5.2 billion to work across 485 deals, according to a McKinsey & Co. report in September. It wasn’t until 2010 that impact investments in India started to gather momentum and the last two years have been quite exceptional. Investments touched the billion-dollar mark for the first time in 2015 and scaled to nearly $1.1 billion last year.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Rwanda: renewables sector receives $50m investment
Rwanda's renewable energy sector has received a $50 million injection to be distributed through the Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD).
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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