InVenture is maturing!

04/30/2011

We’ve been going through a bit of a metamorphasis this past six months - think catepillar to butterfly :)

Starting up an organization is definitely no easy feat. Visualizing an idea and actually going through the motions to materialize it into something you can see, touch and experience are two different things - its about implementation at the end of the day and making sure your product is customized to the needs of your customers - for us that is two-fold: our micro-entrepreneurs and online users.

InVenture was born as a nonprofit in 2010. While this made sense initially - we realized that it didn’t quite give us the flexbility we needed to be sustainable and efficeint with our resources. We’ve spent the last few months undergoing a transition from a nonprofit start up to a more mature hybrid model. Thus, InVenture is now comprised of two entities: InVenture Capital Corporation (ICC) and InVenture Foundation.

By creating ICC we’ve been able to privatize portions of our operations and have been able to cut down overhead and better leverage the resources at our disposal for the benefit of our micro-entrepreneurs. We believe this allow us to be more responsive to our clients, be sustainable operationally, and increase the resources we have available for scale. However, I want to assure you that 100% of your InVestments has always and will continue to go to the micro-entrepreneur in need.

Additionally, through our Foundation, we are able to provide educational training and on-the-ground advisory support to InVenture entrepreneurs and their communities through its fellowship program. Fellows work in an InVenture community with partner MFIs and NGOs to provide the necessary business guidance and training to entrepreneurs in the field. In addition, the InVenture Foundation partners with universities and grant-making foundations to provide access to the latest research, technology and human resources for the benefit of InVenture Foundation’s entrepreneurs and fellows. Lastly, InVenture Foundation is responsible for and uses a transparent process for scouting, evaluating, approving and developing relationships with local and international NGOs as potential recipients of entrepreneurs’ re-investment funds.

We didn’t come to this decision lightly. We thought long and hard about our mission - “to provide the capital, guidance and support needed to empower micro-business owners in emerging markets to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty” - and realized by creating two entities we would be much more efficient and focused. Lastly we thought our core values: Accessiblity, Sustainabilty, Responsiveness, and Transparency and we believe that having both these entities allows us to stay true to these values.

If you have any questions, please make sure to visit our FAQ section at www.inventure.org/FAQs. We’re obviously new and growing and we can’t stress enough to learning to us is most important. We believe in creating products that meet the growing needs our customers and that means constantly learning, refining and changing along the way :)

- Shivs