Over the past decade, we have established strong working relationships with our Limited Partners. In the 2017 calendar year alone we will complete two Co-Investments in the healthcare and SME financing sectors respectively. Working closely with our investors speaks to Lok's value of creating alignment, on both social and financial outlook, across the value chain, from entrepreneur to investor.
"Veritas is one of the most interesting companies in the micro, small and medium enterprise financing space with the right approach to the growth and risk in addition to being backed by a tremendous management team. Lok being an existing investor gave us a lot of comfort in exploring this opportunity, albeit at an early stage, and we are quite excited to be working with Lok in Veritas moving forward. "
"Dr. Mohans was the co-investment opportunity offered to us by Lok Capital. It was the opportunity to invest into an efficiently run chain of Diabetes Clinics and partner with Dr V Mohan, Dr R M Anjana and Dr Ranjit Unnikrishnan, founders and managers of the business. The founders of the Company not only came with extensive technical experience in the space but also with the complementary skill sets to manage a growing organization. We were very impressed with the vision of the founders of the Company and their dedication towards becoming the largest and esteemed diabetes services provider in India. Moreover, Diabetes is an extremely under-penetrated market as estimated 70 mn people with diabetes currently live in India and >50% of people with diabetes are unaware of their condition."
In many of Lok's companies, shareholding structures and dynamics can become complex over time given the capital intensive nature of the businesses as well as the balance that is required when you have both Impact oriented and Commercial investors as shareholders. Ujjivan is a very relevant example of one such company and having multiple of Lok's LPs participate in Ujjivan helped us manage the complexity.
This is a perfect example of a WIN-WIN-WIN where the company benefits from having a top-tier Institutional investor participate; Lok benefits because it gets to leverage its capital 2-3X with a well aligned co-investor and CDC benefits because their portfolio management can be more effectively handled.
The entire turn around of the Microfinance industry post the crisis in 2010 was led by Equitas who diversified quite rapidly and the strong aligned shareholding supported the change. Lok worked together with many of our Limited Partners in Equitas with one even nominating Lok to be on the board on their behalf.
In new, innovative models where business metrics are not already established, what is of prime importance is the patience and long term view that investors need to exhibit. Having Proparco by our side in IFMR helped Lok maintain our voice in the company as well provide patient capital.
In many of Lok's companies, shareholding structures and dynamics can become complex over time given the capital intensive nature of the businesses as well as the balance that is required when you have both Impact oriented and Commercial investors as shareholders. Ujjivan is a very relevant example of one such company and having multiple of Lok's LPs participate in Ujjivan helped us manage the complexity.
