Northern Arc India Impact Fund raises INR 650 M from BIO

Northern Arc Investments Managers (NAIM), one of the leading private debt fund managers from India, announced that BIO has invested INR 650 M in Northern Arc Impact India Fund (NAIIF), NAIM’s eighth fund. The investment will be used to support and address the funding gaps for impact enterprises (IE) through easy, reliable, and sustainable access to finance.

NAIIF, a SEBI-registered category II AIF (Alternative Investment Fund) has a total corpus of INR 7 billion, raised from marquee investors, including domestic and international development financial institutions, global impact firms, domestic financial institutions, banks, corporate treasuries, and domestic and global family offices. Key investors that participated in the first close included Blue Earth Capital – a leading global impact investment firm, Anthos Fund & Asset Management – a comprehensive values-based asset management & investment advisory services firm from the Netherlands; and Calvert Impact Capital – an institutional impact investor based in the United States. The overwhelming response to the fund led to the exercise of the green-shoe option of an additional INR 3.5 billion.

NAIIF has already deployed 100% of its commitments across 30 investments in impact-focused themes such as - financial inclusion, agritech, & climate tech. Through NAIIF, 3.5 million women availed funding in their bank accounts; 8.9 million residents of rural and semi-urban areas were extended funding, and 1 million borrowers were newly introduced into the financing system. About 5.2 million loans were extended from the NAIIF to finance farm productivity through loans for the purchase of fertilizer/ manure/seeds/tractor or equipment/livestock & poultry.

Since its inception in 2009, the Northern Arc Group has enabled financing for Originator Partners who have impacted over 54 million lives across India, of which more than 42 million were women. The debt lender has raised close to about Rs 1 trillion in financing for customers.