social impact

Korean VC Sopoong closes $8M fund for startups focused on environmental impact • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Asia, Climate, climate tech, social impact, Sopoong Ventures, south korea, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Two years ago, South Korea unveiled a plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Getting there will be another story. Although Korean manufacturers say they are trying to change their ways, the country’s GDP is linked to some uniquely pollutive industries, including petrochemical producers, automakers and shipbuilders. Though some businesses may never be truly sustainable, a venture firm in Seoul argues that emerging climate-tech startups will help big manufacturers do better overall. Sopoong, a social impact-focused VC, intends to support environmentally minded tech founders in South Korea and Southeast Asia, while building a bridge between Korean conglomerates and startups in the sector. Sopoong has closed on around $8 million (10.3 billion won) for its latest, sixth fund, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to approximately $22 million (28 billion won). I spoke with Sopoong chief executive Max Sang-Yeop Han, a serial entrepreneur who joined Sopoong in 2016 and acquired the firm in 2019, to learn about the VC’s plans. “It is a significant signal for large South Korean corporates participating as limited partners of environmental and climate tech-focused venture capitals like us,” Han said. “Participating LPs [Korean conglomerates] are passionate about climate technology and want to take part to address the climate and environment issue as they agree that the climate crisis is one of the urgent problems.” Korean petroleum refining company GS Holdings and chemical company Isu participated in Sopoong’s climate-focused fund as limited partners as of April, Han said, adding that they will be more like strategic partners to Sopoong. Non-profit organizations such as Asan Nanum Foundation, established by Hyundai Group, and D.Camp, as well as startup founders and executives, including the co-founder and former CEO of Krafton, Gang-Seok Kim, also joined Sopoong’s climate fund, Han continued. The early-stage VC had already set up five social impact funds and backed 81 startups since 2020, after Han acquired the firm in December 2019. Sopoong was launched in 2008 by Jaewoong Lee, who co-founded South Korea’s largest internet portal operator Daum Communication, which merged with Kakao in 2014. Now, the VC firm wants to zero in on the climate crisis and other environmental issues through its sixth fund, but other tech sectors like SaaS and IT will still be on its radar, according to Han. “Two-thirds of the fund will be invested in the environment and climate tech, including renewable energy, agri-tech, and food tech, and the rest will go to the information technology industry investment,” Han said. Its sweet spot is early-stage ventures from seed to series A stages across South Korea and Southeast Asia. Its average check size is $150,000, but the firm can go up to $600,000, Han told ZebethMedia. The sixth fund has already invested in 16 startups, including MetaTexture, a plant-based food startup; Selex, a Vietnam-based electric scooter and battery-swapping technology startup; Myorange, a platform for managing charitable donations; and Function 12, an automation tool that helps users complete coding and design files. Nine of the 16 portfolio companies are participating in Sopoong’s first accelerator program, which launched in June and runs for six months. Sopoong invests up to $350,000 into each startup via the accelerator program and offers mentorship, co-working space, administrative support and networking opportunities with experts. On top of the accelerator, the firm also launched a six-month fellowship program to foster climate tech entrepreneurship. So far, Sopoong says it has selected 13 individuals with master’s or doctoral degrees in environment-related majors, offering them $1,700 in grants per month and other support, including the accelerator program. If participating fellows succeed in founding a startup, Sopoong could make a seed investment, Han said.

Goodera makes corporate volunteering events easier, even for remote and hybrid workplaces • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in corporate volunteering, Goodera, social impact, Startups, volunteeringNo Comments

Corporate volunteering is on the rise, as a way to increase a company’s social impact while boosting employee engagement. Managing volunteer programs, however, can get tricky. Goodera wants to make it easier with an end-to-end platform that includes pre-vetted volunteer opportunities and trained hosts. The Utah-based startup announced today it has raised a $10 million Series A led by Elevation Capital, with participation from Zoom Ventures, Xto10X, Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network. Former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and Flipkart founder Binny Bansal also contributed to the round. Goodera currently has volunteering openings from over 50,000 nonprofits that can be done in an office, remotely or by hybrid workers, with the goal of making them accessible to more employees. Some examples of volunteer opportunities Goodera has hosted include onboarding interns, holiday gift-wrapping, helping Ukrainian war refugees and introducing robotics to kids through automated bot building. The startup was founded by Abhishek Gumbad in 2020, and now has over 400 customers. Goodera’s volunteering programs have been used by companies like IBM, Target, EY, Amazon and 60 Fortune 500 companies. It currently reaches more than 10 million employees in total, and wants to hit 100 million employees by 2025. When Goodera was founded two years ago, socio-political movements like Black Lives Matter were at a peak, said Gumbad, and many employees wanted to participate. But pandemic lockdowns made that difficult. Goodera had already been working on virtual volunteering for remote teams, including a pilot program with a large cloud organization. Now Goodera helps both nonprofits and corporations increase volunteering. For nonprofits, Goodera serves as a partner that helps them find volunteers. Gumbad noted that only a very small number of nonprofits have a dedicated corporate relations program and international nonprofits are hard to screen. Goodera founder and CEO Abhishek Humbad “It’s difficult to find nonprofit partners aligned to your corporate impact goals,” he said. Goodera solves that with a team focused on sourcing and training nonprofits to offer volunteering opportunities on its platform. It currently works with 50,000 nonprofits in more than 100 countries. Gumbad said that it was able to find opportunities for the Ukraine war and Pakistan floods in less than three days after news broke. After partnering with nonprofits, Goodera develops programs, making sure they are engaging for employee volunteers. Its experience team pilots volunteer opportunities through Goodera’s Volunteer Tuesdays program, getting feedback from members of the startup’s team. Once volunteer opportunities are live, it provides a trained host for each one. Goodera now has a network of over 1,000 hosts, who can oversee the organization and logistics of opportunities in 500 cities in more than 20 languages. Volunteer opportunities are also supported by a delivery operations team that creates over a week’s worth of content for each event, including emails, posters, landing pages, videos and nonprofit testimonials. Goodera signed its first customer in August 2020 and now has $7.5 million annual recurring revenue. It monetizes by charging by usage per employee for each placement, which typically costs between $25 and $50 based on if their volunteering opportunity is remote, in-person or at a location. In terms of competition, Gumbad said there are some companies, mostly small corporate event organizers, that partner with nonprofits to host volunteering opportunities, but those engagements are sporadic. He added Goodera differentiates from other volunteer platforms like WeHero and Give to Get by offering volunteer opportunities in a wider geography, and full service including curation, hosting and reporting. Goodera’s funding will be used to scale its operations, with volunteer opportunities catered to diversity, equality and inclusion, environmental, social and corporate governance and employee resource groups. It also plans to explore impact engagement around DEI awareness and training workshops. In a statement, Zoom’s head of corporate development, M&A strategy and Zoom Ventures Sanjay Rao said, “Volunteering has become mainstream across companies of all sizes, sectors and geographies. It is the most meaningful engagement, especially for Gen Z and millennials. Goodera solves a massive need that was underserved and overlooked, especially in the remote and hybrid working environment. We are proud to be a customer and now an investor in their ambition to bring volunteering to every workplace.”

Human Impact Capital is a new $50M fund investing in social impact startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EnjoyVenture, Germany, Redstone, social impact, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Redstone and EnjoyVenture have combined forces to create Human Impact Capital (HIC), Germany’s first dedicated scial impact VC fund. The fund will deploy cash into digital business models focusing on health, education and “living,” and explicitly invests to have an impact along sustainable development goals. To HIC, this means “No Poverty, Good Health and Wellbeing, Quality Education, Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities.” I spoke with the fund’s manager, Lucas Paul, to find out what drove the creation of the fund and its investment thesis. “We are convinced that innovation is key to overcoming the biggest social challenges of our time, and we are dedicated to contributing to a better future and supporting innovation through investments in social impact startups,” said Paul in an interview with ZebethMedia. “Entrepreneurs providing solutions to these social problems will advance our society and lay the foundation for the generations to come. While impact VC investments are on the rise, 75% of those flow into environmental topics.” For the initial closing, the fund decided to partner with strategic anchor investors having strong ties to the social sector. Among others, the Bank für Sozialwirtschaft, Germany’s leading bank for the social sector, committed substantially to HIC, fund reps told me. The fund aims to invest in digital business models that tackle society’s biggest challenges, typically investing between €500,000 and €1.5 million. The firm focuses on early-stage startups in Europe, and reserves more than 60% of its commitments to follow-on investments. “We firmly believe that economic profit and positive impact mutually reinforce each other and will accelerate at scale. We’d like to prove this fundamental belief and show that we’re able to generate above-average returns for our investors while maximizing the social impact of our investments,” Paul said. “Ideally, this concept is proven and widely accepted 10 years from now, which would make the world a better place.” One of the areas where the firm believes it can have an impact, and where it is actively seeking to invest, is in technologies that make aging smoother. “One element that is a common characteristic of all Western society is an aging population. Access to this growing target group is crucial today and will become even more important in the future. The challenge needs to be faced now. We currently do not see a lot of models that have solved the problem of accessing this group and of including them in an ever-changing jungle of digital solutions,” said Paul. “Most digital startups simply ignore people older than 50 within their target group and are missing out on enormous revenue potential while the quality of life of the elderly stagnates. We’d like to see more ambitious founding teams working on solutions for the elderly to ensure health care, to protect the aging population while limiting loneliness.”