The Rise Fund is a new global impact fund founded by Irish singer-songwriter and venture capitalist Bono, internet entrepreneur and former PayPal president Jeff Skoll and TPG Growth’s Bill McGlashan. The private equity fund, which just recently announced the close of its $2 billion hard cap, is set to revolutionize the booming impact investing universe.
Bill McGlashan, TPG Growth founder and managing partner, relocated from Silicon Valley to Mumbai three years back for about one year in order to oversee the firm’s investments in emerging markets. Due to McGlashan’s and his private equity group’s interest in emerging markets, The Rise Fund should see a large outflow to India and the larger Asian region, providing growth capital to impact businesses which otherwise have found it hard to secure funds from PE investors.
The Rise Fund describes its mission as “committed to achieving social and environmental impact alongside competitive financial returns.” The fund seeks to partner with creative entrepreneurs in order to build successful businesses that drive “meaningful, measurable positive change.”
The fund brings together three key collaborators including TPG Growth, Elevar Equity and The Bridgespan Group. TPG Growth is the growth equity and middle market buyout platform of alternative asset firm TPG, which manages more than $8 billion assets across sectors such as healthcare, financial services and technology. “Human-centered venture capital firm” Elevar Equity invests in transformative and scalable entrepreneurial ventures focused on low-income communities and has democratized essential services for over 20 million underserved customers, primarily in India and Latin America. The two will work alongside global nonprofit strategic advisor the Bridgespan Group, which serves mission-driven organizations and philanthropists and helps develop rigorous impact assessment systems.
Investors include the $197.1 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, the second Swedish National Pension Fund and the $22.1 billion New Mexico State Investment Council.
In September, The Rise Fund backed a Series A funding round in Washington, D.C.-based Dharma, a software-as-a-service platform for humanitarian and public sector organizations that respond to areas of conflict, disaster relief and infectious disease outbreaks.
