Accion has announced the final close of a $61.6 million fund for its Accion Venture Lab Fund II and rebranded from Accion Venture Lab to Accion Ventures to invest in early-stage tech startups across Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the United States.
The Limited Partners in the fund include the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO, Proparco, ImpactAssets, Ford Foundation, MetLife, and Mastercard.
According to Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion: “This fund seeks to support the growth of early-stage, disruptive companies providing high-quality, affordable financial services that can help reduce poverty and create opportunity for millions of people globally.”
Schlein adds that with the huge uptick in mobile technologies in emerging economies, there is a significant opportunity for the fund to connect many small businesses and low-income consumers to the digital economy for the first time.
Amee Parbhoo, Managing Partner, Accion Ventures, said: “With this new funding, we seek to build on our success to date, finding and scaling some of the world’s most innovative fintech companies that provide a full suite of financial products and services to small businesses globally.”
Established in 2012, $59.4 million has been deployed in 76 companies across more than 30 countries, with 13 full or partial exits across all geographies. The three most recent exits were Apollo Agriculture, a company providing tech-enabled inputs, financing, insurance, and training to smallholder farmers in Kenya and Zambia; Lula, an all-digital small business lender and bank account provider for small and medium enterprises in South Africa; and Pula, a company providing agricultural insurtech solutions to smallholder farmers across Africa and Asia.
Recently, Accion invested in Nigeria’s PaidHR, Foyer in the United States, FinFra in Indonesia, and Flowcart in Kenya.
Beyond deploying capital, Accion Ventures provides hands-on support to startups with access to market expertise, board governance, networking and follow on investments among others.
“We are excited to support the growth of incredible innovators across the globe in early-stage fintech who are using technologies ranging from satellite imagery to conversational commerce and embedded finance,” Rahil Rangwala, Managing Partner, Accion Ventures. ”We believe we have a strong pipeline and team in place and will continue to leverage our networks to deliver quality, affordable financial services for small businesses and consumers globally.”
According to the Global Findex 2025, worldwide, 1.6 billion people do not have an account with a financial institution or have an inactive account, and the $5.7 trillion annual financing gap for micro, small, and medium-sized businesses represents a huge market opportunity for innovative startups ready to disrupt the traditional financial system. Accion Ventures aims to find and help scale companies at the forefront of the latest trends in fintech, delivering financial solutions leveraging embedded finance, alternative data, and more.