Social Venture Fund holds €16.4m first close

SVM raised €7.3m for its first fund in 2010. The maiden vehicle invested in Auticon, an IT company staffed only with autistic employees; charity Deutschland Rundet Auf; and VerbaVoice, a technology solution to translate voice into text for the hearing-impaired.

Investors
EIF, which provided around €6.9bn to private equity funds across Europe last year, committed approximately €8m to Social Venture Fund II. It is the first investment by EIF under the Social Impact Accelerator initiative that was launched in early 2013. The initiative is a pan-European public-private partnership, providing financing to European social enterprises.

Other investors include banks, such as Deutsche Bank via its DB Impact Investment Fund and UniCredit's German unit HypoVereinsbank, family offices and international foundations.

Investments
SVM will invest in social enterprises across Europe via Social Venture Fund II, operating in three sectors: work, education and the alleviation of human suffering, as well as organisations concerned with sustainable ways of living.

The fund provides mezzanine and debt, which is the most common SVM investment, as well as equity to start-ups. When investing equity, SVM prefers to invest with a co-investor.

People
Johannes Weber is the founder and managing director of Social Venture Fund. Ulrich Grabenwarter is head of strategic development equity at EIF.

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• Topics
• DACH
• Venture
• Germany
• European Investment Fund