Ananda Impact Ventures closes its third fund at €50 million, announces first five investments

Exclusive: Munich-based impact VC firm Ananda Impact Ventures has secured €50 million for its third fund, bringing the total amount under its management to €80 million across three funds. Among the limited partners of the new fund are the European Investment Fund (EIF), the UK-based impact player Big Society Capital (BSC), and several private investors.

Ananda is planning to make about 20 investments from its third fund, with tickets ranging from €2 million to €3.5 million, the founder and managing partner of Ananda Johannes Weber told tech.eu. Over the past few months, the firm has already closed first five deals from the new fund with Careship, Talea, HomeTouch, MobileJob, and Raremark, all based either in Germany or the UK where Ananda has its offices.

“We have a pure European focus with teams in London and Munich. Scaling social innovations across borders is a the core of what we do,” Weber said. “Our goal with fund III is to make market rate returns. Our first fund is at 15 percent gross IRR, which exceeded investors expectations by far. We see that the gap between traditional VC and impact investing is closing.”

In a conversation with tech.eu, Weber also said that one of the main differences between Ananda and other VC firms is that it actively assesses and measures the impact achieved by its portfolio.

“We invest in companies that try to not only make a societal difference but also measure the impact,” he said. “The impact they're trying to achieve is inherently baked in their business model. This means that the larger the turnover, the bigger the impact. Our carried interest and performance depends on the achievement of not only financial but also impact goals.”

Ananda positions itself as a pioneer in certain topics, at which traditional VCs aren't looking yet. Some of the industries that currently attract the traditional VCs' attention, like care or educational tech, used to be only looked at by impact investors, Weber explained.

At the same time, Weber is sure that there's still space for more impact VCs in the European ecosystem, especially in Germany where there are only two such firms—Bonventure and Ananda. There's demand for that from both entrepreneurs and other VCs, who are happy to jointly invest with experienced impact players with the topic expertise and market knowledge.

“ we invested with Creandum and Spark Ventures into Careship,” Weber said. “They probably didn't need us for the extra money, but they did need us for the knowledge about the German care market. The company also wanted to have us on board for that reason.”