NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

By David Bank

When Bill Gates agreed a couple years ago to put a small piece of his personal fortune into a fund that invests in companies serving low-income customers in India, he invited the fund managers to return with a plan to scale up their investments and their social impact.

The fund managers recently took such a plan to Gates, and have again come away with not only a check, but an endorsement from the world’s richest man. Gates also co-chairs the world’s biggest philanthropy, but his new personal investment in the Capria Accelerator Fund is about business, not charity.

“I’ve been a long-term proponent of the view that any of society’s problems that can be solved with market-based solutions must be solved that way,” Gates said in a statement. He said he was excited to invest in Capria Accelerator “as a means to scale global efforts around impact investing.”