Posts filed under 'Funding'
Brazil: Venture Capital’s Next Hotbed?
Investments in Brazilian startups are surging, but high taxes and strict labor laws could hamper returns.
Brazil is best known around the world for soccer, samba music, and supermodels. Now it’s emerging as an attractive destination for investment capital.
At a June 25 conference in New York, a Brazilian venture capital trade group announced some impressive figures. As of the end of 2008, local and foreign investors had committed $28 billion in venture and private equity capital to Brazilian companies, said Luiz Figueiredo, president of the Brazilian Association for Private Equity & Venture Capital. That’s up from $6 billion in 2004, amounting to a hearty 50% compound annual growth rate over the last four years. Investors have financed 500 Brazilian companies to date with venture or private equity capital, and there’s $12 billion left to invest over the next few years from that $28 billion kitty (by S. E. Ante, BusinessWeek, June 28, 2009)
July 2, 2009
LeapFrog Investments Raises $44 Million for Microinsurance Fund
The LeapFrog Investments Financial Inclusion Fund, the world’s first investment fund focused on microinsurance, has announced that it has raised $44 million, which it will invest in businesses that provide insurance and financial services to twenty-five million low-income people in Africa and Asia.
The fund raised the capital from public and private investors around the world, including the European Investment Bank, the Omidyar Network, the Hivos-Triodos Fund, ACCION International, and the Calvert Large Cap Growth Fund.
According to a recent Microinsurance Center report, while there are some one billion low-income people in developing countries who are willing and able to pay for a safety net to protect their family or business, fewer than 3 percent of those people currently have any kind of insurance.
“The world desperately needs market-based solutions to poverty that draw in major financial investors by offering fair but competitive returns,” said LeapFrog founder and president Andrew Kuper. “The best part about microinsurance is that we can reach millions of people, swiftly. Microinsurance is both profitable and scalable. We can think big. We don’t have to choose between money and meaning.”
Source: Philanthropy News Digest
June 23, 2009
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