Positive Ventures, a São Paulo–based venture capital firm, secured $25 million in capital commitments for its impact fund. This represents a tripling of its previous fund, raised three years ago.
The firm, which also has an office in San Francisco, invests at the pre-seed and seed stages in Latin American founders building tech-driven solutions in climate change, education, healthcare and financial services in underserved communities.
Andrea Kestenbaum, partner and CEO, told TechCrunch that this new fund represents a tripling of its assets under management in less than two years, which amounts to an aggregated market value of $1 billion.
Fábio Kestenbaum, partner and chairman, said in an interview that backing the new fund is a group of limited partners, including large institutional investors and family offices, as well as Fabio Barbosa, CEO of Natura & Co.
Brazil’s Positive Ventures closes on $10M fund for impact investing
From its flagship fund, Positive Ventures invested in such companies as carbon credit provider Pachama and social commerce startup Favo, pioneering the social commerce revolution in Latin America.
By last October, the firm had raised $20 million of the second fund and co-led, alongside Collaborative Fund, in the pre-seed round of Ruuf, a Chilean marketplace connecting homeowners, solar panel installers and lenders.
More recently, it invested in Apprenty, which provides shipping high-quality apprenticeship programs that combine work, training and community in Brazil.
Overall, with the new fund, Positive Ventures intends to invest in between 20 and 25 companies at the pre-seed and seed levels, Fábio Kestenbaum said. Average check size for a pre-seed company will be around $250,000, and for seed rounds, $600,000. The firm is also exploring minority stake opportunities where it will take between 5% and 10%.
“We want to team up as early as possible to develop a nice acumen, business-wise and impact-wise, and be super founder-centered,” he added. “We’re gonna double down on climate investing, AI and all the nature-based solutions popping up especially since Latin America is the world’s hotspot for nature-based solutions and carbon, so we really want to be first movers here.”
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