Strategy Case

Founded in April, 2001, with capital from the Rockefeller Foundation, Cisco Systems Foundation and three individual philanthropists, Acumen Fund is a non profit global venture fund which fights to solve the problems of global poverty using entrepreneurial approaches. Nowadays, over two thirds of the world's population live in poverty and the fund invests patient capital to identify and scale business models that can serve that population.

By supporting entrepreneurial people with innovative businesses ideas that adress the poor people and can provide them basic services and products at prices they can afford and help to create jobs and the growth of the economies, Acumen fund seeks to find long term solutions to the poverty problem.

Despite the goal is to provide dignity to the low income people and not to obtain high financial returns, all the financial returns received are reinvested in new businesses. The typical investments range between $300,000 to $2,500,000 with payback or exit in five to seven years. Along with the money, the Acumen Fund provides management support services to help scale the businesses, having four global offices in New York, Mumbai, Karachi and Nairobi.

to the poverty problem.

And the key is patient capital. Patient Capital is defined as having the goal of maximizing social returns and not financial ones, long time horizons for the investment, risk.tolerance and the flexibility to seek partnership with governments and corporations through subsidy and co-investments and providing management support to help new busines models. The fund carefully invests the philantropic capital in the form of loans or equity in early stage businesses that will generate both financial and social returns.

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