Aavishkaar Capital logs out of sanitation services firm Sara Plast

By Joseph Rai

  • 03 Apr 2020
Credit: VCCircle

Aavishkaar Capital, the impact investment arm of the Aavishkaar Group, has fully exited portable sanitation services firm Sara Plast.

The impact investor, which had invested in the firm more than 10 years back, made a multiple of invested capital (MOIC) of 2x from its investment in the Pune-based company, Aavishkaar said in a statement.

Aavishkaar did not disclose the amount it took out from the exit.

According to VCCEdge, the research arm of Mosaic Digital, Aavishkaar had invested Rs 2.47 crore in Sara Plast in 2009.

Janavi Papriwal, investment manager at Aavishkaar Capital, said Sara Plast's portable toilets have grown from 650 to more than 6,000 since the impact investment firm's bet on the company.

Sara Plast, which was founded in 1999 by Rajeev Kher, is a portable sanitation facilities and services provider across 11 cities in the country. It helps install portable toilets at temporary locations such as construction sites, tourism spots, events and city streets.

In June 2013, the company had raised funding from responsAbility, an asset manager which invests in developing markets.

Aavishkaar

The impact investment firm said it has made 38 exits in total and the exit from Sara Plast is its third in this fiscal year.

Last year in June, VCCircle had reported that Aavishkaar had made a partial exit from its decade-old investment in Utkarsh Coreinvest Ltd through a secondary transaction.

The following month, Aavishkaar agreed to sell its entire stake in Jaypore E-Commerce Pvt. Ltd.

The Aavishkaar Group is one of the world’s largest impact investors. It helps entrepreneurs via equity funding, venture debt, microfinance, investment banking intermediation, consulting, research and access to global networks.

It has raised six funds so far and says it currently has $450 million in assets under management. The group claims its investments have impacted over 105 million lives, and creating over three lakh jobs. Companies in the group’s portfolio include AgroStar, Butterfly Edufields, PayWell, Fabelio, The Karadi Path Education Company, and Soulfull.

Earlier this month, Aavishkaar Capital doubled down on agri-tech startup Ergos and also invested $5 million fintech startup Chqbook.com.