Quona Capital recently closed a $332 million venture capital fund to invest in fintech companies in emerging markets. Monica Brand Engel, co-founder and managing partner of Quona Capital, joined Cheddar News to discuss the risks and reasons for its latest investment goals.

Quona Capital Launches $332M VC Fund for Emerging Markets

venture capital firm quota Capital recently announcing the final close of its fund 3, 332 million bucks. It's the third fund from quota since its inception and will continue the company's financial inclusion investments in emerging markets. So joining me now is Monica brand Engel, co founder and managing partner at quota Capital. Thanks so much for joining me. Give me some more details here about this new fund and how you're going to deploy the money. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So kona is a venture firm focused on fintech for inclusion and emerging markets and we focus exclusively on emerging markets with the belief that there's an enormous potential to be unlocked, both for profit as well as purpose. We are on our third fund and close to a billion assets under management. Total, it is a massive fund Monica. So, congratulations to you and I'm glad that we can talk about emerging markets here. I'm sure higher interest rates have in some cases, unfortunately brought down the value of some of these emerging market companies. But what are the technologies, the creations, the founders and entrepreneurs that you're looking to invest in in these emerging markets. So the exciting thing about technology investing is that it's actually one of the best hedges against inflation and other macroeconomic winds, headwinds that some companies face. So our companies are in the most parts really leapfrogging leapfrogging existing infrastructure, existing ways to deliver financial services and making them more affordable and broadening the types of options available to everyday consumers and small businesses. So it is actually those technology growth rates that help us as a hedge against the devaluation and other challenges in emerging markets. Are there certain emerging markets, Monica in particular where you're seeing just a bevy of entrepreneurs, new ideas and companies come to the table that might look attractive to you. Yes, we definitely, we were present in almost a dozen countries in South and Southeast Asia, Latin, America Africa and Nina that said there are some specific markets which represent a disproportionate portion of our capital. And those will be markets like brazil or India that have been, you know, long time successful countries for us, very dynamic ecosystems, very high growth. But there are other markets sort of on the frontier that are Rising up as sort of secondary important markets in terms of deployments and that includes places like Mexico or Indonesia or in Africa, folks like South Africa and even Egypt as a newer market. Very interesting Monica 332 million, I think that's the size of this new fintech venture fund. So where did that money come from? Who are the investors backing this new fund that you'll be able to deploy? The capital for? That's the part that we're most excited about. We have predominantly institutional investors. So global investment banks, insurance companies, asset managers, fund of funds, foundations, endowments. So again, traditional, mainstream names. We keep them confidential out of protecting them. But they are names that you would definitely recognize. And I even heard some of them mentioned in some of your earlier news updates. Uh but what's great about that is uh, At 74% of our investors in this current fund, the $332 million Cuomo has had being top quartile since its inception. What's the time horizon here in terms of how long you'll be able to deploy money from this fund and how do you measure success? Uh, so we are typical, very traditional 10 year fund. We usually have a five year investment period of five year realization period. But the reality is that given the pace of technology and the vast opportunity, we're usually deploying um in in much shorter time periods and even having realizations in shorter time period. So we are allowed legally for long appear that actually we've had ended up meeting. Um, we are in the way we measure success is actually again both on profits and purpose. So I mentioned being top quartile Cambridge Associates actually puts out rankings by vintage here and by asset class, venture capital, private equity debt, etcetera. And we measure ourselves, we benchmark against those uh, those peers. So we benchmark ourselves against mainstream peers. That's one way we measure ourselves, I our our internal rate of return and multiple of cash, but also as important as the impact. And we measure how we are improving access and quality of financial services to the unbanked and that's a very important metric that we tracked quarterly. Very interesting Monica. I wish we had more time. We are up against the clock here, but I'm just curious where you're based. And since these investments will be in emerging markets, what is the due diligence process before you make one of these investments? So we have, we're mostly based in local markets. I myself, back from Cairo recently, I'm right now, I'm calling you from outside of a suburb of Washington, D. C, where we have an office, we have an office in Bangalore and we have focused on the ground in Sao Paulo Mexico city, Jakarta, Cape town Cairo. So again, we're truly a global fund um and we are planning to invest, you know, similarly in those uh those markets and are eager to talk about our portfolio companies um and maybe in future presentations, phenomenal companies serving businesses and consumers. You have to come back on the show, Monica. Thanks so much for joining today, Congratulations again, that's Monica. Brand. Engel, co founder and managing partner of kona Capital