Mercy Corps Ventures

Entrepreneurs around the world are deploying disruptive business models and transformative technologies to solve the biggest challenges of our time. Simultaneously, we believe that the next generation of highly-scalable and commercially successful startups will evolve in emerging markets to confront these challenges. However, they are often undercapitalized and don’t have access to the resources they need for their ventures to survive and scale.

Mercy Corps Ventures invests in and catalyzes venture-led solutions to increase the resilience of underserved individuals and communities. Founded in 2015 as the impact investing arm of Mercy Corps, we’ve supported 38 early-stage ventures to scale and raise over $355 million in follow-on capital. Our portfolio centers around solutions in adaptive agriculture and food systems, inclusive financial services, and climate smart services and tech infrastructure, so that those living in frontier markets can withstand disruption and plan for the future. Through capital and support, piloting new approaches, action-oriented insights, and rigorously managing impact, we catalyze the ecosystem towards smarter, more impactful investments.

In order to support underserved groups to join the global economy, we advance emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions that accelerate global financial inclusion. We partner with companies to responsibly pilot the application of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tools to provide reliable and direct access to financial services for un/underbanked populations.

Mercy Corps Ventures also managed the Innovation Investment Alliance, a funding collaborative between USAID’s Global Development Lab and the Skoll Foundation that granted over $50 million to eight, proven social enterprises and generated the Scaling Pathways series with insights on how to scale social impact.