Investment platform AWE Funds on Wednesday said it has secured a commitment worth $15 million in the first close of its maiden fund in India.
     
The fund will invest in scalable innovation primarily across climate and sustainability, food and agriculture, healthcare, and additionally in education and fintech sectors while promoting gender equity and climate action as a differentiated strategy to seek commercial returns for its investors.
     
AWE Funds said it "has secured $15 million in aggregate commitments and is targeting an overall fund of $45 million with a green-shoe option of an additional $15 million."
     
Its 'Achieving Women Entrepreneurs Early Growth Fund I' is registered with SEBI.
     
"The fastest growing market and an under-appreciated resource, in most countries are women. By focusing on gender equity and climate action which are very significantly and inextricably linked, AWE Funds' team is uniquely positioned to identify investment opportunities that deliver superior commercial returns to our investors while unlocking serious nation-building impact returns," AWE Funds, Founding Partner, Seema Chaturvedi said.
     
The fund said it has attracted investment support from blue-chip international and India-based institutional investors and high-networth individual investors.
     
The investors include Zia Mody (Founder- AZB & Partners), Soumya Rajan (Founder & CEO- of Waterfield Advisors), Padma Chandrasekaran (formerly Gates Foundation), Divya Sampath (formerly Microsoft), Ajay Prabhu (former COO- Quest Global), Ramakrishnan Raman (Founder- aXYKno Capital), Vikas Chaturvedi (Founder- Valuecent), Sunil Srivastava (CEO- Ampera Life) and Simran Jindal (Executive Partner- IBM Consulting).
     
AWE Funds has set a target of helping 30 million women globally to gain agency by 2030.