Listen to a Conversation Between a Series A Funder and Founder
What does a conversation about Series A funding sound like between an impact funder and founder? What stage does a social entrepreneur typically have to be in to seek in the range of $1M in funding? What are the key criteria an impact investor may be looking for to continue the conversation? How important is fit when looking for funding?
If you have ever wondered these questions as you contemplate and progress social impact initiatives, this podcast episode was designed for you. Tune in to hear Julie Abrams, long time impact investor and co-founder of a new fund, Luminar Brasil converse with Sujay Santra, founder and CEO of social enterprise iKure.
The conversation, captured at Opportunity Collaboration, provides critical insight to learn more about what impact investors are ‘screening for’ and how social entrepreneurs can focus on the right investors.
You can find all of the episodes recorded at Opportunity Collaboration here.
Listen to the Episode
Meet Julie Abrams, Impact Investor and C0-Founder of Luminar Brasil Impact Investing
Julie is currently working on direct and fund investments in Brazil with Luminar Brasil, a high impact venture-style fund investing in scalable companies serving the base of the pyramid, emerging middle class, and the environment in Brazil. The fund targets market returns and measurable impact, with a long-range goal to address Brazil’s income inequality. She has worked and lived in Brazil, and is fluent in Portuguese.
Julie is an impact investing pioneer with longstanding expertise and passion focused on deploying commercial investment capital for poverty elimination and needed goods, services, and resources in underserved markets globally, including over $US 360 million invested to date. She has served on impact investment committees for MicroBuild Fund and Calvert Impact Capital, and previously worked for PwC. Julie was a Fellow at the Lauder Institute, where she earned an MBA from Wharton, and an MA from University of Pennsylvania.
Meet Sujay Santra, Ashoka Fellow and Founder and CEO of iKure
Realizing that there will never be sufficient doctors to treat patients in India individually, Sujay is completely changing the healthcare system from an individualized curative model to a community-based preventive healthcare system to ensure the holistic well-being of communities. He is doing this through ICT for low-cost diagnosis and data analysis of a community’s health indicators, and implementing behavior change programs for the communities in partnership with academic institutions, locals NGOs and businesses.
Sujay founded iKure to address “last mile” health care. It is a unique social enterprise with the mission to provide affordable, accessible, and quality primary health care services to the rural population of India. He was selected as an Ashoka Fellow for his ongoing work in creating initiatives to provide healthcare to millions.