The Brief

The Brief: Beyond Capital Ventures’ contrarian bets in East Africa and India (podcast)

ImpactAlpha · November 4, 2025
Credit: Kasha

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

  • Rewriting the rules of investing in East Africa and India (podcast)
  • “Total impact notes” in Latin America and Africa
  • Gender-lens investing in Canada
  • The growth market in accessibility

At Beyond Capital Ventures, Eva Yazhari is rewriting the rules for investing in East Africa and India (podcast). As a former hedge fund investor, Eva Yazhari is comfortable making the contrarian bet. While other VC investors are swinging for grand slams with AI startups, Yazhari’s Beyond Capital Ventures is knocking down singles and doubles around the west Indian Ocean, one of the world’s fastest-growing regions. The Dallas-based firm invests in East Africa and India from offices in Nairobi and Delhi. Yazhari sees the “gap” in financing available in those regions as an opportunity for investors who are able to go “beyond capital.” Beyond Capital has raised two equity funds to invest in companies in healthtech, fintech, agtech and mobility, from seed rounds and Series A, along with a small private-credit fund (for background see, “Now is the time to be an emerging markets debt investor”). “The gap is where the alpha lives,” Yazhari tells ImpactAlpha on the latest Agents of Impact podcast.

  • GP snapshots. Beyond Capital Ventures is among the fund managers and general partners who have secured early access to ImpactSpace, ImpactAlpha’s new real-time intelligence platform. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be spotlighting other GPs, along with the LPs investing with them, and exploring their strategies for unlocking the alpha in impact. In East Africa and India, the demographic tailwinds for companies serving young and fast-growing populations are offset by underdeveloped capital markets and infrastructure, changing the shape of what Yazhari calls “the innovation curve.” “It just takes a little bit longer for the portfolio companies that we invest in to hit their inflection points,” Yazhari says. “They already have product-market fit. But because of some of the challenges, the tails are a little bit longer.”
  • Embedded finance. Yazhari has family connections to East Africa – her father grew up in Tanzania and her husband in Kenya – which she says has increased her awareness of business realities in the region. For example, she doubts that the thousands of small retail shops in every city will soon be replaced by big box stores. Or that technology solutions will be adopted without a human touch. One portfolio company, Nairobi-based fintech Zanifu, lends to small shopkeepers to help stock their inventory. The company puts loan officers on trucks distributing goods to shops across Kenya – a literal interpretation of “embedded finance” (see, “Why ’embedded finance’ is emerging as the future of global financial inclusion”). Another portfolio company, Kigali-based Kasha Global, is addressing the vacuum for women’s health products left when USAID was effectively shut down. The company is “building the enduring supply chains that will last into the future, where you can’t take the funding away,” Yazhari says.
  • Emerging AI. Yazhari says the bulk of Beyond Capital’s portfolio companies are not only tech-enabled, but “AI native.” In a guest post on ImpactAlpha, her colleague Christophe de Montille details the levels of AI integration among startups. AI as a gloss adds a superficial layer to improve user experience without transforming core operations. AI as an embedded engine integrates into core systems to boost efficiency, accuracy and performance. And AI as the native experience makes artificial intelligence the front-end interface, creating customer stickiness and retention. “The real opportunity lies in discernment – backing the businesses where AI is not just a feature but a foundation,” says de Montille. “Those investors who can tell the difference will capture both the financial upside and the lasting impact of this new wave of innovation.” Keep reading.
  • Keep reading and listen to, “At Beyond Capital Ventures, Eva Yazhari is rewriting the rules for investing in East Africa and India (podcast).” 

Dealflow: Catalytic Capital

First issuance of Total Impact Notes raises $3 million for loans to fund managers in Latin America and Africa. A new financial product is available for impact-first investors who want a simple way to support local ventures in emerging markets (see also, “Trimtab’s unapologetic pitch to wealthy families seeking outperformance – on impact”). Bethesda-based Total Impact Capital has issued its first five-year, 5% Total Impact Notes to back fund managers including LocFund, NESsT’s Lirio Fund, and the Elu Women’s Empowerment Fund, all of which provide capital to ventures in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Nithio, which supports climate adaptation solutions in Africa. The fixed-income notes raised $3 million from purchasers, including Mercy Investment Services, Netri Foundation and the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. “In a world where we need to step up to address the decline in donor funding for development, the notes offer a mechanism for impact investors to do so without an undue expenditure of effort,” said Total Impact’s John Simon. The notes pool loans to “provide impact-first investors with a diversified, fixed income product aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.”    

  • Access to capital. Pooled vehicles like Total Impact Notes streamline the deployment of capital can and make borrowing easier for impact fund managers. Simon told ImpactAlpha that the notes “provide a less costly and onerous mechanism” for high-impact intermediaries in emerging markets to access impact-first capital. Total Impact has developed other investment vehicles for emerging markets, including the Medical Credit Fund, Azure Source Capital, the Transform Health Fund and the Female Entrepreneurship Fund. Other buyers of the new notes include the W. O’Neil Foundation, Dunn Family Charitable Foundation, Austin Community Foundation (advised by CapShift), 3rd Creek Investments and the Ansara Family Fund. The $3 million raise, Simon said, is “a bit short of what we hoped, but enough to get started.”
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NYCEEC and SustainEnergyFinance team up on green affordable housing in Utah. SustainEnergyFinance was founded two years ago to tackle Utah’s housing affordability crisis and help bring down household energy bills. The nonprofit lender has teamed up with New York City Energy Efficiency Corp., or NYCEEC, to support the development of an eight-story development by 22 Communities that is based in a transit-dense area on Salt Lake City’s west side.  The $4.5 million loan was the first for SustainEnergyFinance, which has a pipeline of single and multi-family housing projects and retrofits, said SEF’s Shawna Cuan. NYCEEC, which often works with new green lenders, led the deal. It is the organization’s first loan in Utah.

  • Catalytic lending. 22 Communities is tapping the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and tax equity investors, and received a low-interest loan from the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City to build the project. The pre-development loan will support crucial activities like permitting and engineering studies that are often hard for developers to fund. The mixed use development, called The Cooperative 1881, will add 396 affordable housing units within walking distance of public transit. The building will be 100% electric and powered by renewable energy. “This is a very catalytic opportunity to provide an enormous amount of affordable housing in the Salt Lake area,” Cuan told ImpactAlpha.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Singapore’s GIC, Active Capital and Energy Impact Partners are among investors in the $91 million Series A round of Infravision, which uses AI-powered drones to install and upgrade transmission lines. (Infravision)
  • Australia’s Uluu scored A$16 million ($10.5 million) in Series A funding, backed by Trinity Ventures and Burda Principal Investments, for its seaweed-based plastic alternative. (Uluu)
  • Ontario-based Maple Bridge Ventures reached a C$10.2 million (US$7.2 million) first close for its debut fund, which invests in food and agriculture technologies, healthtech and enterprise solutions by immigrant founders. (Maple Bridge Ventures)

Impact Voices: Inclusive Economy

Accessibility is a growth market impact investors can’t ignore. When Communication Service for the Deaf launched the CSD Social Venture Fund in 2017, it was the first venture fund dedicated to deaf-owned and -operated businesses, according to the fund’s Rosa Lee Timm and Bryan Edwards. Since then, its portfolio of finance, healthcare, travel, food and entertainment startups has generated more than $17 million in revenues. Other investors have launched disability-lens funds, including Enable Ventures. Artificial intelligence and unmet consumer demand is driving an expanding pipeline of accessibility-first innovators, including Sign-Speak, a speech to sign language translator, and Nagish, a phone-call captioning app, Timm and Edwards write in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. The global assistive technology market is estimated to reach $61 billion by 2028. 

  • Curb cut effect. Accessibility innovations often ripple far beyond their intended markets, like the sidewalk ramps designed for wheelchair users that now benefit people with strollers, luggage and hand trucks. Texting, closed captioning, voice assistants and predictive text were also designed for people with disabilities but now provide wider value. “These innovations beautifully address the vast diversity of human needs and experiences,” write the authors. They point to a new “reverse curb-cut effect,” where products built initially for mass adoption are applying an accessibility lens – Apple’s AirPods Pro 2, for example, now offer a clinical-grade hearing aid feature.
  • Overcoming challenges. Founders still face stigma and societal barriers, including misperceptions about who deaf and disabled people are, their leadership abilities, and the value and contributions they bring to the world (see, “How to invest – and succeed – in disability tech”). Many assistive tech products and solutions are not yet widely affordable. And too many accessibility products and solutions still come to market with little participation from the communities they aim to serve. “These gaps are real, but they are also opportunities for investors willing to back the ventures that close them,” write Timm and Edwards. 

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Matt Logan has been promoted to general partner at Earthshot Ventures… Impact Engine adds Liz Michaels, former managing director at BlackRock, to its advisory board… Hannah Beinecke, formerly with Citi, joins Galvanize as an investor partnerships associate… Ceres has an opening for a chief network officer. 

Aspen Institute is looking for a program assistant for its energy and environment program… Acumen is recruiting a program finance manager and an energy access communications manager… Visa’s social impact and sustainability team is hiring an operations and strategic initiatives analyst… SoLa Impact is looking for an associate director of asset management… Stanford University has an opening for a managing director for its Stanford Center for Just Environmental Futures.

The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians Economic Development Corp. is recruiting an economic development manager… Capitals Coalition and the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts have completed a merger that unites two key players in the impact accounting field… The Clayton Christensen Institute is on the hunt for “groundbreaking healthcare innovations” to spotlight in 2026.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– Nov. 4, 2025