Social Finance launches $2 billion India funds

MUMBAI: Social Finance, one of the world's leading impact financing platforms has announced the launch of two funds of USD 1 billion each for India (collective value of both funds USD 2 billion). Social Finance India will be headed by Govind Sankaranarayanan, who held critical leadership positions at the Tata Group for over two decades, and until very recently was the COO of NBFC giant, Tata Capital. The Board of Social Finance India includes several financial sector veterans, Dr. Rajiv Lall, Founder MD & CEO of IDFC Bank, Mr. Ashish Dhawan, Founder of PE firm Chrysalis Capital and Ashoka University and Mr. Vikram Gandhi, Former Vice Chairman, Credit Suisse and Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Mr. Yuri Afanasiev, Chief Representative of the United Nations in India has recently joined as a member of the Advisory Board.

The purpose of the first fund, India Education Outcomes Fund (IEOF) is to bring funds on scale to the best education service providers, with a sharp focus on improving learning and skilling outcomes. The second fund, the India Impact Fund will catalyse debt for impact in housing, health and education.

The Tata Trusts and Omidyar Network, two of the leading names in the philanthropic world have backed Social Finance India. The India Education Outcomes Fund (IEOF) is a unique outcome fund structure where a corpus of US$1 billion will focus on improving the quality of education in India and set up 'pay-for success' contracts with pre-determined metrics.

The India Impact Fund is intended to be a USD 1 billion pool of funds which will catalyse debt to Impact Enterprises. It will help bridge the large funding gaps in meeting the UN Sustainable Development goals. The first Fund within the umbrella IIFF, will target equity funding for small lenders in the priority sectors as outlined in the PSL (Priority Sector Lending) - Agriculture, MSME, Education, Housing, Social Infrastructure, Renewable Energy.