Beyond Capital Ventures: Serving the rising middle class in emerging markets

Beyond Capital Ventures (BCV) invests in founders serving the rising middle class in emerging markets, focusing on India and East Africa. BCV targets essential sectors like healthcare, financial services, and climate solutions. The fund also pioneers an Equitable Venture structure that provides founders in the portfolio with a profit share in the GP carry. As a diverse-led firm, they deliver financial returns with a scalable impact.

Gender lens investment is at the core of Beyond Capital Ventures. As a firm with investment activities deeply rooted in the feminisation of finance, BCV promotes gender equality across leadership, governance, investment process and women investment decision makers in order to make investments that drive positive impact in emerging markets.

The 2X Certification pilot presented a unique opportunity for BCV to showcase the firm’s strengths and alignment with best-in-class gender lens investment practices. BCV was also motivated to receive recognition and approval from a well reputed and globally recognized brand that benchmarks gender-smart investment practices. Participating in the pilot was a natural extension of their commitment as a private capital provider to build just and fair capital markets in two of the top four emerging markets, East Africa and India.

BCV found the evaluation process for the 2X Certification was both thorough and enlightening. The structured approach of the certification process allowed them to critically assess our practices and identify areas for improvement, which was incredibly valuable. One key takeaway from this experience is the importance of rigorous, evidence-based evaluation in promoting gender-smart investment practices. The 2X Certification process underscored the value of having robust mechanisms in place to track, measure, and report on gender impact.

Through the process, BCV emerged as a leader in impact reporting and regular collection and monitoring of gender pay gap data among their portfolio companies. The 2X Certification process emboldened the team to deepen focus and to extend the public awareness of their leading methodologies. With an even stronger commitment to enhance their own internal processes for gender-lens investing, they will continue to prioritise transparency, depth and accountability in our investment process and decision making. This experience has also highlighted the power of taking stock, collaboration and shared learning, which they plan to integrate more deeply into our work with portfolio companies and partners.