Caspian Impact Investments (CII), the multi-sector debt fund managed by Caspian Impact Investment Adviser (Caspian), has crossed INR 200 Crores in disbursals. This marks an important milestone for the fund and also validates the need for CII.
CII is the third fund set up and managed by Caspian with the mandate of providing debt to enterprises reaching out to the underserved segments in India. Caspian had earlier set up and managed the Bellwether Microfinance Fund (Bellwether) and the India Financial Inclusion Fund (IFIF). Through these funds, Caspian made a number of key investments in the form of debt and equity and helped in shaping the financial inclusion sector as we know it today. Currently, CII funds food & agribusiness SMEs (Producer Owned and Entrepreneur Owned), microfinance, small business finance and affordable housing finance institutions as well as affordable housing builders. CII plans on entering the healthcare sector in the near future.
Since its inception in 2013, CII has disbursed more than 50 loans across food & agribusiness, financial inclusion and affordable housing sectors with an average ticket size of about INR 4 Crores. CII can do both secured and unsecured loans of up to INR 9 Crores. The fund has the ability to make plain vanilla monthly instalment based loans as well as loans with flexible repayment schedules. This flexibility makes the loans offered by CII very attractive to high growth businesses, especially the food & agribusiness SMEs which tend to have a seasonal operations. The tenor of loans offered by CII range between 6 months to as long as five years.
CII has forged strong partnerships with several international financial institutions who have chosen Caspian as a partner in India. CII has a knowledge and risk sharing partnership with the Rabo Rural Fund for the agribusiness SME portfolio. In addition, the Rabobank Foundation provides guarantees for CII loans to Producer Owned Organisations. This knowledge partnership will enable Caspian to strengthen the extensive research that it does on each sector that it lends to.
In March this year, CII raised funding of USD 20 Million from the US Government’s development finance institution, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), USA. The initial investors in CII include reputed development finance institutions and investors like Gray Ghost Fund, Triodos and FMO.
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