LONDON, Dec. 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Net Purpose, a global impact data provider, has completed a $2.5m round led by Illuminate Financial, with participation from Revent Ventures; Jim O'Neill, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management; Kevin Gould, Co-Founder of Markit; and J Jeffry Louis, former chairman of Gannett Co. They join existing and new investors, including the Louis family; Matt Cooper, Co-Founder of Capital One Bank and Chairman of Octopus Investments; Sari Miller, Managing Partner, Impact Ventures LLC; Stefano Bernardi from Atomico's Angel Programme; Matt Robinson, Founder of GoCardless and Nested; and Vlad Tropko, Managing Director of Digital Horizon.
Founded in 2019, Net Purpose has built a data infrastructure that quantifies the social and environmental outcomes of companies and investment portfolios, enabling investors to effortlessly report on their impact and their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals.
"With one third of the world's capital ($90 trillion) now committed to investing sustainably for impact, investors need hard facts on the social and environmental outcomes of their portfolios," said Net Purpose Founder and CEO Samantha Duncan. "It's insanely hard to access this today in a transparent and cost-effective way. Net Purpose helps investors overcome this challenge of selecting the right metrics, aggregating data and benchmarking portfolio performance."
Mark Whitcroft, who is joining the company's Board of Directors from Illuminate Financial, a specialist investor in financial market tech companies, said: "ESG and impact are the biggest trends sweeping financial markets and, in our view, we are in the early days of a once in a generation shift. Net Purpose has unrivalled impact measurement expertise and a fabulous team who we're excited to partner with on this next stage of the company's journey."
Ashby Monk, Net Purpose Board Member and Investor, Executive and Research Director of the Stanford Global Projects Centre, and Member of the CFA Institute's Future of Finance Advisory Council, said: "All investors need real data on the outcomes of their investment portfolios to make sound long-term investment decisions. Net Purpose is filling a critical gap in this market, building the data infrastructure to put these facts at the fingertips of all investors."
The additional financing will be used to expand the engineering and analytics teams and expand access to social and environmental performance data for more investors.
About Net Purpose
London-based Net Purpose is the world's first dedicated data provider for a new generation of investors: who invest for profit and purpose. Net Purpose cleans, standardizes and structures data on the social and environmental outcomes of companies and investment portfolios, so that investors can effortlessly report in line with all global standards and goals. The company was founded by impact measurement experts Sam Duncan, former Head of Impact at Leapfrog Investments, and Dinah Koehler, former Executive Director, Sustainable Equities at UBS Asset Management. For more information, visit www.netpurpose.com.
About Illuminate Financial
Illuminate is an enterprise Fintech specialist venture capital fund based in London, New York and Singapore. They invest in companies whose products are critical for the financial industry. Their deep industry networks and knowledge make them a trusted partner and help their portfolio companies achieve their full potential. For more information, visit www.illuminatefinancial.com.
