Emerging markets venture capital firm Quona Capital has announced the final close of its third fund at $332 million. The fund will back technology companies that are expanding access to financial services for underserved consumers and businesses in Latin America, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Exceeding its initial target of $250 million, the third fund takes Quona’s aggregate committed capital to over $745 million.
Limited Partners in the new fund include global asset managers, insurance companies, investment, and commercial banks, university endowments, foundations, family offices, and development finance institutions. The majority of Fund III investors returned from prior Quona funds, joined by more than 20 new relationships, the company said in a statement.
Quona was established as an independent venture capital firm in 2015 by co-founding managing partners Monica Brand Engel, Jonathan Whittle, and Ganesh Rengaswamy.
“With 35 per cent of the global population and over 150 million small businesses, the Asia region hosts a very large proportion of the world’s marginalised consumers and small businesses. The rapid digitisation of these markets—combined with the innovative solutions developed by the companies Quona is investing in—are bringing these consumers and small businesses into mainstream economic and financial systems," Rengaswamy, who leads the firm’s investments in India and Southeast Asia, said.
Quona Capital funds have made more than 65 investments since the firm’s inception.
According to the firm’s recent impact report, its portfolio firms have served 8.8 million SMEs and 30.2 million retail customers (with 80 per cent and 77 per cent previously underserved respectively), generated $836 million in revenue, financed $2.4 billion in loans, enabled $12.3 billion in payment transactions, employed over 23,000 people, 35 per cent of which are women and raised $3.99 billion in cumulative capital.