SOCIAL FINANCE INDIA

Social Finance is an innovative financial intermediary whose mission is to mobilize capital to achieve positive social and environmental outcomes. The organization was first launched in the UK in 2007 and is known for pioneering Social Impact Bonds and Development Impact Bonds. In 2018, Social Finance came to India, with a mandate to first tackle the issue of poor learning outcomes in the Indian education sector. Through the $1 Billion India Education Outcomes Fund (IEOF), the main project I worked on, the goal is to design and launch multiple impact bonds at scale to not only support effective and scalable education interventions, but to also a create an ecosystem of NGOs, private donors, traditional investors, and policymakers that would enable partnerships, develop a knowledge base and further explore ways to create systemic change in the Indian education system. 

In my role as Sr. Consultant at IEOF, my responsibilities included researching and developing a repository of original thought pieces to help support the market building initiative, conduct extensive due diligence on different education service providers (NGOs and enterprises) across India, and create collateral (prospectus, pitch decks) for potential investors.

Social Finance as an institution has tremendous credibility. However, impact investing is in an extremely nascent stage in India. To help introduce the ideas of impact bonds, catalytic capital and innovative financing for social change to the traditional investor and grant giving class (who work in silos and don’t necessary interact with each other) was a great learning experience. Working for a new and cutting edge organization like this not only allows you to work on the back end to help structure the projects, it also allows you to have face time with the larger audience to whom you have to sell new ideas or new instruments to invest in.

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