Washington and Bengaluru-headquartered venture capital firm Quona Capital has announced the final close of its second fund after securing $203 million in capital commitments.
The fund, Accion Quona Inclusion Fund, was originally targeting to raise $150 million. It will invest in startups focusing on fintech and financial inclusion in markets such as Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Africa.
Accion Quona Inclusion Fund’s LPs include global asset managers and insurance companies, investment and commercial banks, as well as university endowments, foundations, family offices, and development finance institutions.
With the close of the latest fund, Quona Capital’s assets under management (AUM) currently stand at $363 million.
Quona has already clocked nine investments from the new fund over the past one year in companies such as Sunday (end-to-end insurance products), JULO (a digital consumer lender), and Ula (a digital commerce and fintech player), among others, in Southeast Asia.
It has a strategic relationship with Accion, a nonprofit financial inclusion pioneer.
“Quona is uniquely positioned as a pioneering scale-up stage venture firm focused on fintech for inclusion in emerging markets and we are thrilled to have become one of the most active fintech investors in emerging markets in a short span of five years,” said Quona Capital co-founding partner Ganesh Rengaswamy.
Quona’s first fund, which had a corpus of $143 million, has witnessed two exits so far – the sale of Coins.ph (a payments company in the Philipines) to Indonesia’s Gojek in January 2019, and the IPO of IndiaMart, a B2B e-commerce company, last year.
“We focus on scale-up stage financial technology companies that are expanding access to financial services for underserved consumers and small businesses,” said Rengaswamy.
Edited excerpts from an interview with Rengaswamy:
