Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), a Singapore-based impact enterprise, has announced its second round of funding to help Karma Primary Healthcare Services reach India’s underserved population.
The round was led by early-stage investor and equity crowd-funding platform 1Crowd, together with existing investors Ankur Capital, Beyond Capital Fund and Ennovent. The company also received support from organisations including Tata Trusts, UBS Optimus Foundation and WISH Foundation.
“At IIX, we believe in impact investing’s capacity to drive inclusion. For this reason, we especially enjoy working with impact enterprises like Karma Healthcare that employ innovative ways of providing affordable goods and services to the last mile,” Robert Kraybill, managing director of IIX, told Development Finance.
Karma Healthcare provides affordable and reliable healthcare services to rural populations in India through a hub-and-spoke model, which connects remote communities to doctors via real-time online video consultations.
Kraybill explained that the equity capital will be used to expand the reach of Karma Healthcare’s network of e-Doctor clinics to serve more than half a million patients in its target communities. The e-Doctors will provide free consultations to over six thousand people in remote areas through its outreach camp.
Impact Partners, the private placement platform that supports Karma Healthcare, connects over a thousand accredited impact investors globally to catalyse investment in pre-screened, high-impact enterprises operating in Asia.
“Our screening process for the impact enterprises that we showcase is a key factor that differentiates Impact Partners from other impact investment platforms,” noted Kraybill. “Before we showcase any enterprise on the platform, the IIX team visits the enterprise in the field and provides hands-on technical assistance to ensure the enterprise is investment ready. We also prepare an impact assessment to quantify and highlight the impact that the enterprise generates.”
Kraybill added that impact investments at scale could address some of the most pressing social and environmental issues threatening sustainable and inclusive global financial system. A major challenge to this is mobilising the resources of enough investment-ready impact enterprises to match the rapidly growing demand for high-yield assets by investors.
“We realise that building this pipeline of investable impact enterprises requires immense time and energy, but we do it because we also realise how crucial this part of the impact investing equation is to the future of the sector, and the progress of the world towards meeting the sustainable development goals,” he said.
To date, IIX spans 40 countries and continues to expand with the goal of unlocking US$1 billion of impact investment capital, with which to impact as many as 65 million lives by 2022.