Saludos, Agents of Impact!
In this month’s newsletter:
- Impact dealmaking in Mérida
- Climate investing in Mexico
- Expanding solar access in Ecuador
- Financing Caribbean food systems
¡Empecemos! – Jessica Pothering
Featured: Overheard at FLII
In Mérida, dealmaking takes center stage as impact investors gather for FLII (video). When Chicago options trader Hans-Christian Lauer built a data-driven model to identify the strongest markets for early-stage venture investing, Latin America ranked at the top of the list. Lauer ditched trading options, stood up Zenani Capital and launched a pilot fund to invest in impact ventures across the region. Late last year, Zenani backed BioPlaster Research, a Yucatán-based startup that turns sargassum, the brown seaweed piling up on Caribbean coastlines, into biodegradable packaging materials. “The level of adaptability and tenacity that founders have in the region is bar none,” Lauer told ImpactAlpha at last week’s Latin American Impact Investing Forum, or FLII (video). The more than 1,000 capital allocators, founders and ecosystem builders who converged on Mérida, Mexico embodied the FLII’s mandate: Move more money, more effectively, across the region.
- Impact marketplace. A newly launched fund of funds backed by members of the Buffett family, Abundance Circle, is rolling out a $100 million evergreen vehicle to deploy catalytic capital into impact funds across Latin America, Asia and Africa. New Ventures and the IDB Lab launched a fund focused on Latin America’s silver economy (see, “Solutions for healthy aging in Latin America’s ‘silver economy’”). New Ventures also partnered with Spain’s Ship2B Ventures to stand up the New BSocial LatAm Fund, a $60 million vehicle targeting climate and quality-of-life startups across the region, with a focus on Mexico and Colombia. Sonen Capital, Mexico’s Fondo de Fondos and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, or CAF, announced a partnership to catalyze impact capital across Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Climate investing in Mexico. Mexico offers a full suite of investable opportunities across the climate solutions space, argues contributing editor Marilyn Waite in her latest ImpactAlpha column. The Climate Solutions Stocks open-access database contains listed equity opportunities across Project Drawdown climate solutions for Mexican companies. Nearly half of all Mexican bond issuances have an ESG label. VC firms with a climate thesis in Mexico include ALLVP, Amplifica Capital, Regenera Ventures, Savia Ventures, Dalus Capital, and Fundamental Venture Studio. And Mexico is shaping up as an attractive market for distributed renewable energy, electric vehicles, and plant-based alternatives. In Mexico, says Waite, investors from the risk tolerant to the risk averse, “will find a rich landscape for a diversified climate portfolio.” Read Marilyn’s column, “How climate investors can build a diversified portfolio in Mexico.”
- Keep reading, “Dealmaking takes center stage as impact investors gather in Mérida for FLII,” by Erik Stein.
Dealflow: Energy Transition
Ecuador’s DREX snags investment from Exagon Impact Capital to scale solar access. DREX, an Ecuadorian solar developer focused on medium sized commercial projects, has secured financing from Exagon Impact Capital for a six-megawatt solar installation at one of the country’s largest shrimp exporters Grupo Almar. The deal marks DREX’s first project to receive financing and Exagon’s first investment in Ecuador since commencing operations six years ago. The New York-based firm invests in energy and infrastructure projects in Latin American and the Caribbean. “These middle market companies don’t want to put their capital towards the energy part,” Exagon’s Marc Frishman told ImpactAlpha “They want to focus their capital on their core business — sign a contract with us for 15 or 20 years, we’ll sell you energy, and we’re responsible for everything else.”
- Missing middle. DREX founder Joselyn Del Rosario spent years confronting the “missing middle” in the region’s solar energy market. In her previous role at Nextergy, an energy solutions provider, she structured solar installations for commercial offtakers in Ecuador. Roughly 90% of the projects she originated never secured financing. Del Rosario founded DREX in 2024 to close that gap. In addition to its role as a developer, the company is building a digital platform designed to standardize how these mid-sized solar projects are presented to investors, hoping to create a clearer pipeline of investment-ready opportunities.
- Go deeper.
Other investment news crossing our desks:
- Food systems. Zurich-based responsAbility Investments backed three new agtech ventures in Chile, Peru and Mexico through its Sustainable Food Latin America strategy. IDB Lab anchored the strategy with a $15 million allocation.
- LP / GP. Bogotá-based ALIVE Ventures closed its second impact fund at $55 million with backing from Proparco, Impact Fund Denmark, FMO and regional investors including Bancoldex and Cofide… São Paulo-based SP Ventures reached a $50 million second close for its third agriculture technology fund with backing from IDB Lab, JICA and Belgian family office Nest.
- Agtech. Beneficial Returns provided a $200,000 impact-linked loan to Heincke, which helps Colombia’s smallholder farmers transition to regenerative agriculture.
- AI for education. Brazilian tutoring platform BeConfident raised $16 million in a round led by Prosus Ventures to expand its AI learning platform beyond Latin America. The company connects students with AI tutors through WhatsApp and serves more than three million users across the region.
Signals: GP Snapshot
CaribGROW fund seeks to bridge equity financing gaps for Caribbean food systems (podcast). The C in LAC is for Caribbean, as in Latin America and the Caribbean. Even for LatAm investors, the 16 small island markets, from Jamaica to French-speaking Martinique, are often an afterthought. High interest rates, a lack of scaled investment opportunities and mounting climate threats have kept private capital on the sidelines. Intentional Asset Management’s John Morris and Tirtha Patel are seeking to raise $100 million for the CaribGROW fund to finance upgrades to more robust food systems in the region. “There’s been no equity going into the region, and therefore initiatives don’t turn into businesses,” Morris, the former head of Merrill Lynch’s Latin America private banking and wealth management strategy, says on the latest episode of ImpactAlpha’s Agents of Impact podcast. CaribGROW takes minority stakes in portfolio companies, allowing existing owners to retain control; investors receive a preferred return before profits are shared.
- Import substitution. Caribbean nations import roughly $6 billion in food each year, despite having the productive capacity to supply more of their own demand. That mismatch is the foundation for CaribGROW, the debut fund of Intentional Asset Management, a unit of 17 Asset Management. The fund aims to provide equity capital to Caribbean-based food companies that reduce imports with local production or boost value-added exports, including through hydroponics, aquaponics and vertical farming. The fund has already warehoused its first deal, an investment in Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee and Bottled Spring Water, a producer of premium coffee and spring water sourced from sustainably run Jamaican farms. The team is in discussions with large US and international food companies that could serve as potential acquirers of portfolio companies.
- Keep reading and listen to, “CaribGROW fund seeks to bridge equity financing gaps for Caribbean food systems.” Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
Don’t miss these upcoming impact investing events:
- Global collective TWIST and the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative are partnering to bring together Indigenous leadership, Brazilian and South American networks, asset owners and managers at the Systemic Investing Summit on April 14 -16 in Rio de Janeiro. Submit your expression of interest here.
- SiliconCaribe and Entrepreneurs Across Borders will host Beyond the Beach Caribbean Impact Investing Summit in Kingston, Jamaica on April 23 – 25.
- Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit, or LARIS will take place May 12 – 14 at Club Choquenzá in Bogotá, Colombia. Hosted by SVX Mexico and Regenera Ventures, the conference will highlight investment opportunities in Latin America’s regenerative sectors such as agriculture, forestry and natural capital. Details here.
- Pro Mujer will hold its annual gender lens investing forum at Universidad UTEC in Lima, Peru on May 26 – 28. Tickets go on sale next week. ImpactAlpha is a proud media partner of GLI Forum Latam.
- Latimpacto, a network of Latin America-focused impact investors, has issued a member call for content proposals for the ImpactMinds conference, set to take place in September in Manaus, Brazil. Details here.
Root Capital seeks a partnerships account associate in Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia or Peru… ThirdWay Partners is hiring an investment associate in Bogotá… Also in Bogotá, Open Society Foundations has an opening for a program managing director for the Latin American and Caribbean regions… Village Capital, in partnership with Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh, is accepting applications for the Reshaping Food Systems LatAm 2026 accelerator program through Friday, March 27.
Impact investing accelerator AuRA, led by Fundación Bolívar Davivienda and IDB Lab, have opened a call for applications for investors who are interested in joining its Impact Investment Ecosystem Accelerator.
