Aspada Investments

Aspada provides early stage financing in the form of equity and structured debt to small enterprises in India that provide commercial returns in sectors that provide essential services and increase market access to underserved communities. Through such investments, it is expected that the Company will catalyze future investments by demonstrating that investing in small businesses not only achieves important social aims but also is economically viable.

Aspada builds on the experience and the track record of the SONG Fund, a $17 million venture fund setup in 2009 and backed by the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), Omidyar Network, and Google. Over the last three years, SONG has focused on investing in early stage firms in previously under-invested, high-impact sectors such as low-cost healthcare, education, and agriculture. The goal has been to create significant socio-economic impact with invested capital as well as to “re-price” the risk of investing in early stage companies in these sectors.

The fund has begun to disperse capital and announced it's first transaction in April of 2013, having invested in an end-to-end fresh vegetable supply chain company in South India that aggregates produce at the farm gate, clean, processes, and sell to many major retail markets. The company works directly with small-hold farmers to improve livelihoods and open market linkages.

Financial description

Aspada Investments will expand the boundaries of SME financing by providing both equity and structured debt capital to entrepreneurs operating in sectors critical to India’s sustained growth. Early stage equity financing plays an important role in the new fund as the market remains underserved in the sub-five million deal size segment in non-technology sectors; however, the market for structured, self-liquidating products in India is significantly larger given the deficiencies within the local banking system. By creating a vehicle that can fund with both equity and structured debt, Aspada will help to play an important role in helping to further the access of small firms to the capital markets.
Aspada will provide early stage equity, quasi-equity, and structured debt capital to small businesses across a variety of targeted sectors: agriculture, healthcare, education, logistics, financial services and basic utilities. Aspada will invest in highly scalable models that cater to underserved mass-markets and that help to lower the price of goods and services, create large-scale employment and/or prevent community deterioration. In order to serve a diverse set of business models and scalability profiles, Aspada will employ a variety of financing instruments depending on the characteristics of the business model.