Participated · Series C · Feb 2014

d.light designs and distributes solar-powered household products and offers PayGo consumer finance to make them affordable to low-income, off-grid households. The company uses securitized receivables financing to scale distribution and fund its PayGo offering across sub-Saharan Africa. The new multi-currency facility will purchase $176 million of receivables in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and is intended to enable access to renewable energy for an estimated six million people over the next three years. With this facility, d.light has a combined securitized financing purchasing value of $718 million across five facilities since 2020, including two in Kenya, one in Nigeria and one in Tanzania. Management says these receivables-based facilities let d.light remain consistently cash-flow positive and remove the requirement for further external equity fundraising. Earlier this year its $110 million Brighter Life Kenya 1 facility fully repaid senior debt ahead of schedule from internally generated cash flows — a first in the off-grid solar sector. d.light designs and sells solar-powered home systems and other essential solar household products, paired with a Pay‑Go personal finance service to make units affordable for low-income customers. Founded in 2007, the company launched its first solar product in 2008 and expanded into markets including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria, where it began operations in 2022. d.light says it has sold nearly 30 million products, affecting over 150 million people, and aims to reach a billion people in developing countries by 2030. The company reported a 41% revenue surge in the first half of 2023, primarily driven by its Nigerian operations. d.light has also used securitised finance in other sub‑Saharan markets to raise capital for off‑grid solar and is applying that experience to scale in Nigeria. d.light sells affordable household solar products and provides low-cost Pay-Go financing to low-income families, offering items such as solar lanterns, solar home systems, TVs, radios, and smartphones. The company has sold nearly 30 million products globally. It operates a finance model that leverages customer payments for solar purchases to raise capital and expand market share. d.light plans to scale its Pay-Go personal finance service in Tanzania using the new securitization capital. The company maintains an office in Arusha City, Tanzania, employing over 50 full-time staff to support local operations and the finance facility. d.light is a global for-profit social enterprise that manufactures and distributes solar lighting and power products designed to serve the more than 2 billion people without reliable electricity. Founded in 2007 by Ned Tozun, the company has sold 19 million solar products and operates a distribution network of over 15,000 retail outlets. In 2016 d.light launched a fully integrated Pay-Go solar home system and d.light Atlas, a proprietary back-end payment management system. The company has offices in San Francisco, Nairobi and New Delhi. d.light raised $50m in debt financing from the European Investment Bank, responsAbility Investments, Social Investment Managers & Advisors (SIMA), SunFunder and another mission-aligned investor. It intends to use the funds to continue scaling globally, launch new appliances and solar home system offerings, and provide financed Pay-As-You-Go solar home systems to additional customers in existing and new markets. d.light is an off‑grid solar solutions company that sells solar light and power products and operates in 62 countries across Africa and Asia. Founded in 2007 and led by CEO Ned Tozun, the company is based in San Francisco, Nairobi and New Delhi. It uses Pay‑as‑you‑Go (PayGo) financing to reach low‑income families and aims to serve the more than 2 billion people globally without reliable electricity. d.light recently raised an additional $10.5m comprising $5m in equity from Norfund and $5.5m in grants from Beyond the Grid and the Shell Foundation. Prior to this, the company raised $22.5m in a Series D and $7.5m in debt financing. The new funds will be used to expand operations and bring clean off‑grid power to more low‑income households in Africa and Asia.

Led · Equity · Mar 2012

Bioceptive, Inc. is a New Orleans, LA-based medical device company focused on women's health. The company is led by Stewart B. Davis, MD (CEO and President), Shuchi “SK” Khurana (COO), and Benjamin D. Cappiello (CSO). Bioceptive has developed a novel IUD inserter designed to enhance the safety and efficacy of insertion procedures globally. The inserter launched in 2010 and is currently in a late development phase with preclinical testing underway. In April 2013 the company received $1.1M in funding to support its development efforts. As part of the financing, Orin Levy, MD, MBA, a New World Angels director, joined Bioceptive’s board of directors. Bioceptive is developing a patent‑pending device intended to simplify intrauterine device (IUD) insertion for physicians and make the procedure more comfortable for women. The company says the device targets adverse effects tied to current insertion methods, including infection, pain and IUD expulsion. The article notes IUD expulsion occurs in roughly 2–10% of users and is correlated with the experience of the medical provider inserting the device. Bioceptive plans to finalize the device, test it in cadavers and begin the FDA clearance process within the next six months. The company was formed in 2010 by Shuchi Khurana and Ben Capiello and is housed at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center. Bioceptive is raising $250,000 to complete development and regulatory work; Gray Ghost Ventures in Atlanta is the only known investor. The piece frames the opportunity against broader contraceptive market context cited in the article (a $15.5 billion global market cited, with a 2017 projection to surpass $19 billion).

Participated · Equity · Oct 2011

PharmaSecure develops pharmaceutical authentication technology that prints unique ID codes on packages, enabling consumer authentication by SMS. The company has printed over 65 million pharmaceutical packages with these unique codes. Launched in India (Gurgaon) in 2009, it also offers services in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Founded in 2007 and led by CEO Nathan Sigworth, PharmaSecure intends to use new funding to create applications to respond to the Government of India’s drug serialization requirements. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade of India mandated unique serial numbers and barcodes for exported drugs by July 2012, creating near‑term regulatory demand. PharmaSecure closed a $3.9m funding round to support those development efforts.

Led · Equity · Oct 2009

Racemi builds automated server migration and server imaging software that quickly clones server workloads—including operating system, applications, and configuration—between dissimilar physical, virtual, and cloud platforms. Its software automatically converts workloads to run on target platforms by applying necessary tools and drivers, reducing migrations from days to minutes and preserving existing configurations for reliability and supportability. The company says it has thousands of customers, users, and partners worldwide and has announced partner agreements with IBM, Phoenix NAP, and Windstream while strengthening ties with Amazon Web Services and VMware. Racemi is expanding into European and Asia‑Pacific markets and plans to use new funding to scale sales, services, and engineering to meet growing demand. Financially, Racemi closed a $10 million Series C in July 2014 and previously closed a $7 million Series B in July 2012. The company positions its server imaging technology as offering the broadest range of physical, virtual, and cloud platform coverage in the industry. Racemi develops server provisioning and cloud migration technology that automates migration of physical and virtual servers to, from and between cloud providers and across data centers. Its software supports major cloud platforms including Amazon EC2, CloudStack, GoGrid, OpenStack, Rackspace and Terremark. Racemi offers DynaCenter for cloud providers, professional services teams and ISVs, and Cloud Path as a SaaS product for small- and medium-size enterprises to migrate applications into clouds in minutes. The company is led by CEO Lawrence Guillory. Racemi has raised $7M in a Series B round from Paladin Capital Group and Harbert Venture Partners. It intends to use the capital to scale sales, services and engineering. In conjunction with the funding, Wayne Hunter of Harbert Venture Partners and Philip Eliot of Paladin Capital Group joined Racemi’s board of directors. Racemi is an Atlanta, GA–based provider of image-based provisioning software used to automate data center operations. Its core product focuses on image-based provisioning to streamline data center workflows. The company announced a $2.5M venture funding round led by existing investor Gray Ghost Ventures. Proceeds will be used to further develop its software and continue expanding its business in the U.S. Racemi also announced the appointment of Lawrence Guillory as Chief Executive Officer. The article does not disclose revenue, user counts, valuation, or other financial metrics.