Acumen Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in sustainable development operations, announced four new investments in Pakistan. The investments amount to over USD 2.8 million. Acumen Fund began investing in Pakistan in 2002 with a focus on the housing sector, providing slum-dwellers with affordable legal housing and infrastructure alternatives, as well as financial services that allowed low-income clients to improve their homes and supplement their incomes. Acumen Fund has since expanded its focus to address the broader set of critical issues keeping the majority of the population of 160 million people in poverty.
$1.4 million is being provided to The First Microinsurance Agency (FMiA), a company designed to provide health and life insurance to the poor, in a joint venture investment with Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM). FMiA is the first systematic micro-insurance initiative in Pakistan, and its overall objective is to reduce the vulnerability of poor families to financially catastrophic events through microinsurance. By helping families maintain a minimum standard of living, microinsurance can provide an opportunity to bounce back and take charge of their economic and social positioning in society. FMiA’s microinsurance products are distributed through micro-finance institutions, NGOs and social organizations, as well as corporations and local government agencies.
A $750,000 equity investment and $750,000 debt investment will go to Kashf Holdings Private Limited (KHL), a holding company providing financial services to low income households through its established companies. Kashf Holdings is a part of the larger Kashf Foundation which seeks to create a conglomerate of companies that each focus on offering specialized services to the overall microfinance market in Pakistan
Micro Drip will receive a $200,000 debt investment and $300,000 equity investment. Micro Drip markets and distributes affordable drip irrigation products in the Tharparkar desert and other arid regions of Southern Pakistan. Micro Drip seeks to make thousands of rain-fed farmers less dependent on rain as a source of irrigation and allow them to farm all year round, often boosting their income three to four fold in one year. 80% of the farmers in these areas where Micro Drip operates live on less than $1 per day, making them some of the most economically insecure regions in Pakistan.
Sehat First (‘Health First’), a network internet driven health centers that provide affordable healthcare and medications to low-income communities will receive a $200,000 equity investment. There are only 74 physicians per 100,000 people in Pakistan, with healthcare facilities concentrated in urban areas. Rural areas often lack qualified doctors and vital medications. Sehat First provides health consultancy services to low-income patients using an online application that remotely links doctors and specialists with their patients via the Internet. Sehat First physical health centers also provide medicines and offer general store items for sale.
Acumen Fund Pakistan Director Aun Rahman stated, “The lessons that we will learn and the insights that we will gain from our new investments in FMiA, Kashf Holding Co, Micro Drip, and Sehat First will help us to build viable and scalable models for the delivery of health services and innovative irrigation solutions to rural populations.”
Acumen was recently featured in BusinessWeek for their collaboration with the Salesforce.com Foundation and Skoll Foundation to create a Portfolio Data Management System (PDMS) which will be released in January 2009. The database seeks to offer a standardized set of data to be used across the broad range of social enterprise organizations, from non-profit to for-profit, to track performance. “When you have no metrics, it is difficult to measure impact, and decisions get made based on anecdotes, not real data,” says Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen Fund.
The Rockefeller Foundation, Cisco Systems Foundation, and individual philanthropists established the Acumen Fund in 2001 and as of June 30, 2008, Acumen had approved $34 million in investments in India, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt and South Africa. Acumen Fund’s Pakistan portfolio totals $6.4 million in committed investments in enterprises focusing on drip irrigation, micro insurance, housing, health clinics, and other critical needs.
Scott Everett, Research Assistant
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