ImpactAlpha Latin America

ImpactAlpha Latin America: Impact opportunities amid uncertainty in Brazil

Dennis Price · March 26, 2025
Impacta Mais in São Paulo | Photo credit: Impacta Mais 2025

Saludos, Agents of Impact! 

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¡Empecemos! – Dennis Price

In this month’s newsletter:

  • Opportunities amid uncertainty in Brazil
  • Regenerative returns in Mexico
  • JICA’s Michiko Kogure on investing with trust in Latin America
  • Venture capital fund merger

In Brazil, local impact opportunities emerge from global uncertainty. The cancellation of a decades-old festival celebrating Black culture and creativity sparked discussions at last week’s Impacta Mais 2025 in São Paulo about whether the Trump administration’s stance against diversity and inclusion had reached Brazil. The cancellation of May’s Festival Feira Preta, for lack of sponsorship support, is likely a symptom of a more local issue in Brazil’s impact ecosystem, reports ImpactAlpha contributor Gilberto Lima from São Paulo: investors’ failure to grasp the strategic economic role of Brazil’s social, cultural and underinvested communities, like smallholder farmers. Investors supporting such entrepreneurs do so with “a social impact lens, not an economic impact lens,” said Feira Preta’s founder Adriana Barbosa. The Impacta Mais gathering of more than 1,200 impact delegates surfaced challenges, both global and local, to Brazil’s growing impact economy, as well as creative ideas and opportunities for unlocking private capital. “I don’t notice any major investment practice shifts,” reassured GSG Impact’s Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen. “For environmental, social and governance risk managers, it’s a good business.” 

  • Innovative agri-finance. Protecting and nurturing biodiversity and natural resources were top of mind at Impacta Mais, as Brazil prepares to host the UN’s COP30 climate summit later this year. On display: a raft of new funds and financing vehicles designed to enable Brazil’s farmers to adopt and advance regenerative practices and restore degraded land and protect natural ecosystems. Macapá-based Engenho is raising capital to deliver on a major new contract in the US for its “açaí coffee,” which uses discarded açaí pits provided by 250 family farms. Three new entities are using tax-advantaged Agribusiness Receivables Certificates, or CRAs – a type of security backed by receivables from rural producers – to channel capital to farming cooperatives and land restoration. VOX Capital is working with The Nature Conservancy on a catalytic fund for rural producers and sustainable land use in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes.
  • Regenerative returns. Latin America has lost 95% of its biodiversity in the last 50 years. But upstarts are proving the business and environmental case for restoration and regeneration. At the Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit in Bogota last week, SVX’s Adam Spence pointed to Huiro in Chile, which is reviving marine ecosystems through regenerative seaweed cultivation. Amazonia Emprende is a forest school in Colombia that teaches academic, scientific and business groups about ecosystem conservation and restoration. Biodiversal supports farmers and companies with climate resilience, soil restoration and other services. Regenera Ventures, which co-hosted the gathering, channels capital into regenerative agrifood and sustainability projects. Regenerative businesses often have more stable income and are more resilient to economic and environmental shocks, says Spence. “We need to think like a living system,” says Spence. “It is the interaction, conflict and harmony, collective effort, and assembly of building blocks put together by stakeholders with a systems lens that can drive positive change.” Read Spence’s full piece. 
  • Uncertainty’s advantages. With the Trump administration’s retreat on climate, as well as immigration, foreign aid, diversity and inclusion, China is stepping up in Latin America. “I think China will be a significant inducer of the green agenda,” predicted Lucas Maciel of Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry and Commerce. Brazil is advancing its domestic initiatives to expand impact and climate investing, like its two-year-old National Impact Economy Strategy, or Enimpacto, and public bank BNDES’s impact program and climate fund (for background see, “Huge opportunities and trickle of capital make Brazil an impact growth market”). The macro-challenges to global impact and climate agendas may bring clarity, said Daniel Izzo of VOX Capital, one of Brazil’s veteran impact fund managers. “It’s a moment that will sort those truly committed from those speaking out just as a trend.” The next Feira Preta is scheduled to go ahead in November in the majority Black cultural hub of Salvador.
  • Keep reading, “In Brazil, local impact opportunities emerge from global uncertainty,” by Gilberto Lima on ImpactAlpha.

Dealflow: Fund Management

Mexican VC firms Nazca and Bridge merge to amplify support for early stage startups. At a fund managers convening in Nairobi, Kenya this month, consolidation weighed on the minds of upstart managers. The tough fundraising environment, coupled with overseas aid and development finance retreat by the US and Europe, has some managers thinking about whether joining forces offered a surer path to fundraising and growth, several managers told ImpactAlpha. On the other side of the world, in Mexico, two early stage venture capital funds have merged ahead of plans to raise a new fund. Nazca, with its $300 million in assets under management, is joining up with Bridge, a $20 million manager, Bloomberg reported. The new firm, which has not yet announced a name, is planning to head back to the market later this year with what will be the Nazca team’s fourth fund and Bridge’s second. “By combining the strengths of Nazca and Bridge, we are creating a powerhouse that will shape the future of the startup ecosystem in the region,” Nazca’s Héctor Sepúlveda said.

  • Portfolio impact. Nazca has played a prominent role in supporting Mexico’s tech innovation through early-stage capital and support. Bridge launched with the idea that startup founders make the best investors in other founders. Neither are impact investors, though both have a number of impact startups in their portfolios. Nazca has invested in insect farming venture Entocycle; PhageLab, which is addressing antibiotic resistance; Finkargo, an online trade platform for underserved small businesses; Glago, a motorcycle finance startup for the underbanked, and many others. Bridge has backed Jefa, a mobile financial services company focused on women; insurance tech company Super; Treinta, which provides a mobile business app for small businesses that operate largely offline; and Elenas, an e-commerce platform for Colombia’s female micro-entrepreneurs.
  • Check it out.

Dealflow overflow. More investment news crossing our desks:

  • Agrifood investing. GoodSAM, a Greenwich, Conn.-based food brand that provides small, regenerative farmers in Latin America with access to premium markets, closed a $9 million funding round led by ALIVE Ventures in and Desert Bloom.
     
  • Circular economy. Ecuador-based Impaqto Capital provided a revenue-based loan to Peru’s CICLO to recycle construction and demolition waste into eco-friendly building materials… Brazil’s BioUs is raising a seed funding round following $1.5 million in awards and grants to develop bioplastics made from agriculture and aquaculture waste… Mexico’s Was Co. raised a $1.5 million pre seed round to repurpose mining waste into new construction materials. 
  • Financial inclusion. Accion and Mastercard support Frubana to extend credit to Brazil’s small food businesses… Colombia-based fintech company Ziro secured funding to provide inventory loans to small retail businesses… Quipu, also in Colombia, raised $1.5 million from Addem Capital to provide uncollateralized working capital to micro and small businesses.
  • Green transition. The nonprofit Inclusiv is providing $147 million in grants to 38 Puerto Rican cooperatives under the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator Program, part of the embattled Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund… Yvy Capital in Brazil raised $7.5 million from logistics tech company iFood for a planned $50 million fund to accelerate adoption of electric motorbikes in the country.
  • Impact tech. Circulo de Credito, Mexico’s leading credit bureau, partnered with Seedstars to launch the Trust-Tech Fund, a $1 million fund focused on AI, cybersecurity and fraud prevention technologies in Mexico.
  • Investing in health. Latin Leap and Amador backed a $3.2 million funding round for Mexico’s Mutuus, a digital healthcare provider.
  • Workforce tech. Atta Impact Capital invested in Jobbi, a tech company using AI to streamline the job application and hiring process and to make it more transparent for job seekers in Central America.

Agent of Impact

Michiko Kogure, JICA: Financing sustainable growth in Latin America (video). Japan’s International Cooperation Agency leads investments in sustainable development with a rare resource these days: trust. USAID’s retreat under the Trump administration has left many projects, and impact funds, in Latin America with unfunded commitments. JICA, by contrast, is boosting commitments in a region the organization views as essential to global development. “There is so much great potential in this region,” Kogure, who leads the private sector investments in the region for JICA, told ImpactAlpha in a video interview on the sidelines of last month’s Latin American Impact Investment Forum. Companies, funds and financial institutions in Latin America have a strong commitment to social justice, financial inclusion and climate changes, she says. From Brazil to Mexico, she says, the private sector is “a driving force to change society.” 

Participants at the FLlI were courting Kogure on the heels of JICA’s commitment of up to $1.5 billion to the JICA Trust Fund, a fund managed by IDB Invest, to co-finance projects in conservation, waste management and water sanitation, financial inclusion, gender equality, social justice and rural development across Latin America and the Caribbean. The boost in lending capacity also comes as JICA looks to grow its investment in impact funds in the region. JICA has backed four funds in Latin America, including a November investment of $15 million in the third fund of Monterrey, Mexico-based Dalus Capital, and an earlier investment in a climate solutions fund from São Paulo-based GEF Capital Partners. “We are always looking for good impact fund managers, and we want to do more now.” Kogure says in uncertain times, building relationships is key. JICA’s mission, she says, “is leading the world with trust.” 

Get in the Game

🏃🏽‍♀️ On the Move

Radical Flexibility Fund welcomed Jorge Antonio de la Hoz Ramirez, a former director at Cube Ventures Accelerator, as a fund manager.

💼 Step Up

Incofin seeks an agrifood portfolio manager in Bogotá… also in Bogotá, Community Investment Management is hiring an investment analyst… Potencia Ventures is looking for an impact investment analyst in Colombia or Mexico… Symbiotics has an opening for a Latin America and Caribbean-focused investment analyst.

🤝 Meet Up

Don’t miss these upcoming impact investing events: