Pahal Financial Services, founded in 2011 by Kartik Mehta and Purvi Bhavsar, is a microfinance institution (MFI) dedicated to serving low-income households across India. Having weathered industry crises, demonetization and the COVID-19 pandemic, Pahal has grown into a top-15 player with 1.2 million customers.

Between 2002 and 2014, Sankara Eye Foundation India expanded rapidly, establishing nine community hospitals to provide free eye care across eight states in southern, western, and northern India. Its operating model ensured that 80% of its patients received free care, subsidized by the remaining 20% who paid for services.

In February 2020, TripActions was a burgeoning corporate travel management scale-up, valued at $4 billion, having raised nearly $500 million since its founding in 2015 from venture capitalists including Lightspeed and A16Z.

In February 2020, TripActions was a burgeoning corporate travel management scale-up,
valued at $4 billion, having raised nearly $500 million since its founding in 2015 from
venture capitalists including Lightspeed and A16Z. It had recently announced the launch of
TripActions Liquid, an in-house payments platform to address the pain-points of travel

In February 2020, TripActions was a burgeoning corporate travel management scale-up, valued at $4 billion, having raised nearly $500 million since its founding in 2015 from venture capitalists including Lightspeed and A16Z.

In January 2022, Sara Chemmaa, founder and CEO of Citron, a Dubai-based start-up that made distinctive lunchboxes and other carry containers, is reviewing her pitch deck for a Series A investment round. Will her growth story appeal to institutional investors? Will the expansion strategy for her consumer goods company convince funds with an investment remit in tech-based ventures?

In March 2020, Tarek Kabrit, founder and CEO of Seez, the online car marketplace and aggregator, must determine how to proceed given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. His decision could make or break the company.

SWVL, a well-funded start-up in the Middle East, solved the mass transportation problem in emerging markets with a unique bus-hailing model. In March 2020, with 150,000 bookings in one day across its operating geographies, it reached its highest utilization rate and gross profit margin. Then Covid-19 hit. SWVL’s first reaction was to shut down operations and hunker down.

This background note introduces the topic of corporate venturing activities (CVA) and describes the four most common types (Corporate Venture Capital Unit, Corporate Venture Builder, Venture Client Model and Corporate Incubator/ Accelerator).

In 2017, Chen Amit and Oren Zeev, co-founders of Tipalti, an end-to-end payment processing start-up, are about to close its Series C investment round when they receive a warning about one of the new investors slated to fund over half the round.