Talk:Unitus Seed Fund

Unsourced
moving this here per WP:VERIFY

It invests in companies which gives significant benefits to the base of the economic pyramid (BOP) population, by providing products and services such as early childhood education, preventive health care, affordable necessities and income-generating opportunities. USF provides a maximum initial investment size of $100,000 and invests in a wide range of business sectors including livelihoods, education, agriculture, healthcare, ecosystem, innovative technologies, mobile, rural distribution etc.

Unitus Seed Fund is part of the Unitus family and was initially incubated by Unitus Labs starting in late 2011. USF announced its first investments in India in February 2012 in three ventures: Milaap Social Ventures, Bodhicrew Services and Hippocampus Learning Centres. In April 2012, USF announced an investment in Villgro Innovation Marketing.
 * History

In July 2012, USF announced that it was graduating from the Unitus Labs incubation program and forming a new investment management company to scale-up investing. The new investment management company is being run by three partners: Dave Richards, Will Poole: and Srikrishna Ramamoorthy.

In September 2012, a new investment management company, Unitus Seed Partners LLC (USP) was set up with offices in Seattle and Bangalore to manage USF going forward.

In January 2013, Unitus Seed Fund (USF) secured over $8 million in investment commitments for its seed-stage venture capital fund focused on accelerating “BoP startups”. Since then USF has invested in skills training company iSTAR, a facility management company Jack on Block and Caravan Craft. 2013 also saw the addition of some corporate heavyweights like Ravi Venkatesan (Chairman of Microsoft India) and Atul Bindal Managing (Director Asia of Khosla Ventures and former President of Airtel Mobile) to its Investment Advisory Committee. In Dec 2013 Unitus Seed Fund India (USFI), a new India-based seed-stage investment fund, received approval from India’s securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to start investment activities. In Feb 2014 Unitus Seed Fund was named India’s most active seed stage impact investor. It is also this year that USF marked its foray into the healthcare sector with investments in healthcare marketplace Medypal and eye screening startup Welcare.

In September 2014, Unitus Seed Fund announced its new India fund's growth to USD $20 million with new foundation investors and Individual investors. New foundations include Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Deshpande Foundation, Lemelson Foundation, Sorenson Impact Foundation, and Wadhwani Foundation

Unitus Seed Fund’s general criteria for investment are :
 * Criterion for investment
 * Seed-stage investment needs
 * Strong, experienced management team
 * Business developed beyond the concept stage
 * Clearly differentiated value proposition
 * Strategies to build effective distribution and marketing programs
 * Potential for improving the lives of at least 100,000 low-income families

- Jytdog (talk) 10:09, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Random list of bare urls that were at the bottom of the article
moving here


 * http://www.impactiq.org/seeding-startups-at-the-base-of-indias-pyramid/
 * http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=162968789
 * http://www.vccircle.com/news/general/2012/02/06/unitus-seed-fund-backs-bodhicrew-hippocampus-milaap
 * http://www.thinkchangeindia.org/2012/02/26/unitus-seed-fund-launches-makes-three-investments/
 * http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-01-04/news/36148931_1_vinod-khosla-ranjan-pai-mohandas-pai

- Jytdog (talk) 10:10, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

unsourced 2
The following is almost all unsourced; moving here per WP:PRESERVE:

Indian Investors of Unitus Seed Fund include T V Mohandas Pai (Chairman of Manipal Global Education and Former Member of the Board of Directors of Infosys Limited), Dr. Ranjan Pai (CEO and MD of the Manipal Education and Medical Group) and Hemendra Kothari (Non-Executive Chairman of DSP BlackRock Investment Managers Limited).
 * Investors

Global Fund Institutional Investors include Crystal Springs Foundation, Lemelson Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Deshpande Foundation, Wadhwani Foundation, Sorenson Impact Foundation and Unitus Labs. Individual Investors include Bill Gates (Co-Founder of Microsoft and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Jeff Clark (Impact Investment Leaders), Vinod Khosla (Partner, Khosla Ventures), Hari Kumar (Founder and CEO, Lionrock Capital), Steve Singh (Chief Executive Officer, Concur and Member, SAP Global Managing Board), Diego Piacentini (Former Senior Vice President, International Consumer Business, Amazon.com), Geeta Aiyer (President and Founder of Boston Common Asset Management), Bob Gay (Co-Founder of Unitus Group) and more.

-- Jytdog (talk) 18:05, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

post-afd rework
I voted keep on the afd, so I'm gonna do my part. Assistance welcome. I've fixed the opening paragraph up and added some new citations; will tackle History next. I think a useful task would be to pare back the portfolio section to only a couple of startups that are themselves notable. Figuring out which those are would be great if anyone is game. Probably DriveU, which is discussed at length in the NYT article, would be a good one.

Update: this one is clearly notable: http://www.forbes.com/sites/suparnagoswami/2016/12/12/this-handheld-breast-scan-is-revolutionizing-how-indians-detect-cancer/#5ee67dda3374

--Vivisel (talk) 05:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)