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@unicefinnovate

The first venture capital vehicle in the UN for investing in digital public goods, creating internal UNICEF capacity as well as entrepreneurial capacity in our program countries.

Venture Fund

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Digital public goods are required for the challenges facing children today

@unicefinnovate

UNICEF’s $20M Venture Fund is a vehicle for UNICEF to learn from and to shape markets of emerging technologies that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion persons’ needs.

The Venture Fund generates value by strengthening communities of problem solvers, increasing open source intellectual property, and growing solutions that bring results for children.

In line with the Venture Fund’s expected return on investment, it invests in digital public goods, and supports investees through strategic capacities.

Seed Funding
Technical Assistance

Business Growth
Open Source Support
Product & Technology Development

Data Networks and Platforms
Maximizing Impact

THE OPPORTUNITY

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The Venture Fund in Action

Founded in 2016, the Venture Fund makes equity free investments in open source technology startups in the developing and emerging economies that have potential to solve some of the most pressing challenges facing children. It also invests in UNICEF’s Country Offices that test and develop emerging technology solutions for children. This Fund allows UNICEF to take small risks within particular technology portfolios, and ensure that even if many of the investments fail, the portfolio is a success.

The Venture Fund invests in solutions that benefit from a small ($50k-$100k) financial investment to significantly impact their ability to move to the next level of development. Investments focus on portfolios of emerging technology being developed by 1) companies in UNICEF programme countries and 2) UNICEF Country Offices.

Vision and Goals of the UNICEF Venture Fund

Vision: To learn from and to shape markets of emerging technology that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion persons’ needs.

Shortened Vision: Shape markets and explore emerging technologies to benefit children.

Examples of Venture Fund portfolio investments include:

using blockchain for payments to schools in South Africa
using Virtual Reality to treat phobias in Turkey
developing open source AI chatbot platform in Brazil to provide customized information in multiple languages
using blockchain to record vital information about the supply-chain journey of vaccines in India;
creating a digitized textbook in the EPUB 3 Format to support children with and without disabilities in their learning process.

Supporting Startups and Country Offices in Developing Early-Stage Solutions

The Venture Fund sources solutions through focused calls around emerging technology areas, such as blockchain, drones, VR/AR, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, etc. To identify the most promising solutions and teams, the Venture Fund partners with a network of startup incubators, accelerators, communities, and works with UNICEF’s offices on the ground.

Startups are assessed against criteria similar to those used in venture capital investing, including strength and diversity of team, strength of business case, feasibility of the technology, potential to impact lives of children, and scalability. The Fund’s investments in Country Offices aim to explore UNICEF’s future rather than the present, with emphasis on frontier technology solutions and scalability across sectors.

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Throughout the investment period, Venture Fund supports investees in five key ways:

1. Seed Funding

The Venture Fund’s initial equity-free seed funding is intended for prototype testing and validation, and to get it to a stage where the company has proof that the solution works. This includes being able to generate data to show impact, usability and strategy.

See Case study: Providing funding to launch Super Abbu in Pakistan, making information more accessible for fathers (Article. Video.)

2. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

Business Growth and 4. Open Source Support

UNICEF’s Venture Fund taps into its network of mentors who help startup teams develop their business model and strategy around an open source technology, to grow their company and ultimately profit. The Venture Fund provides tailored mentorship, based on the startup’s unique needs assessment. As part of the companies’ journey with the UNICEF Venture Fund, they are offered access to a one-to-one mentoring program with one of the Venture Fund’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Business Mentors and Open Source Mentor

The Fund has also developed learning content, such as a flagship e-learning course on Open Source Business Models, to support startups in making their business and solution sustainable in the long run.

Product and Technology Development

In addition to financial investment, startups and country offices receive technical assistance from the UNICEF Ventures team and dedicated expert mentors to help validate and improve their solutions. Connections with partners provide valuable expertise on product development.

3. Data Networks and Platforms

Core to the investment strategy of the Fund is to build cohorts and scalable platforms of solutions.

Startups can leverage UNICEF Ventures’ dedicated Data Science team which hosts and shares data platforms including RapidPro and Magic Box, access unique testing environments such as drone corridors, and utilize corporate partners and use cases.

4. Maximizing Impact

As the world’s leading organisation for children, UNICEF has a network of experts and partners across who can provide geographically localized advice and partnerships needed to reach more users.

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Startup Investments

Country Office Investments

REACH

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Principles of Innovation

@unicefinnovate

design for scale

understanding the existing ecosystem

design with the user

use open source

be data driven

build for sustainability

be collaborative

do no harm

reuse and improve

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Generate evidence.

Connect. Grow.

UNICEF VENTURE FUND

START-UP

SCALED DIGITAL PUBLIC GOODS

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UNICEF VENTURE FUND

MENTORSHIP AND ACCELERATION

GRADUATION OPPORTUNITIES

How do we get there?

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UNICEF VENTURE FUND

UNICEF Venture Fund:

Investment Timeline

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UNICEF Venture Fund Support Resources:

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

UNICEF Onboarding Package template
Needs Assessment; used to diagnose the specific areas of support companies require.
Monthly Check-in Meeting; The Venture Fund team has a monthly check-in call with each startup and uses a report to monitor the companies progress.
Cohort Workshop (resources available upon request); Provides companies access to mentors, training, and networking.
Demo Day and Follow-on Support

UNICEF ONLINE COURSES

Building sustainable business models around open source solutions for startups.
Building frontier tech solutions for UNICEF. Flagship online course for UNICEF staff and other development practitioners on how to leverage frontier technologies for social good.

UNICEF Venture Fund Support

Venture Fund Portfolio Managers are the main focal point for the investee startups.

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INTERNAL / EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Slack: �Platform for communicating with the Fund Team, fellow portfolio companies, and mentors.�
Startup Monthly Newsletter: �Used to foster the community amongst the Venture Fund portfolio companies and share relevant funding opportunities.�
Investor Newsletter: �Launch date: Q4 of 2019* Pilot to engage the larger investor network.

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT AND MENTORSHIP TOOLS

Strategyzer: �Used by the business mentor as a centralized platform to track and update the startup’s business models. �
Visible VC:� Portfolio Management system to track key performance indicators and metrics from companies�
Bounty Platform: �To publicly track and incentivize Technical Support �
Google Drive: �Each company has a dedicated portfolio Google Drive folder; used to to upload documents, communication materials, and collaborate with Fund team members.

UNICEF Venture Fund Collaboration Tools

Please find here more information about the communication and portfolio management tools the Venture Fund team uses.

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UNICEF VENTURE FUND

@unicefinnovate

The Venture Fund offers companies access to and support from both internal and external technical experts in multiple sectors, to guide in the product and technology development for portfolio companies.

Product and Technology Development

Mobile &

IoT

Virtual &

Augmented

Reality

User �Experience

Design

Machine

Learning

Artificial

Intelligence

Drones

Alternative and

Augmentative Communication

Blockchain

Communications

Hardware

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

STRATEGIC SUPPORT

PROGRAMMATIC

DIVISION SUPPORT

WASH

Disabilities

Early

Childhood Development

Health

Education

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Portfolio companies are offered access to tailored one-to-one mentoring programs with both a business and open-source mentor.

UNICEF VENTURE FUND

MENTORSHIP TYPE	BUSINESS MENTORSHIP	OPEN-SOURCE MENTORSHIP
Topics �Covered	Agile Scrum • Value proposition • Competition Map • Stakeholder map • Sales & activities •Pricing and Business Models • Growth plan • Financial projections • Metrics • Investor Mapping	Licensing • Repository Development in line with the principles of developing in the open, • Open source community engagement.
Duration	4-6 Months	4-6 Months
Mentor/ Startup Interaction Frequency	Bi-Monthly	Bi-Monthly or Monthly (Depending on the stage of the program)
Resources	Business Mentorship Curriculum Pitch Deck Template 2-Pager Solution Pitch	UNICEF Open Source Guidelines FOSS project success criteria Milestone Roadmap - master template Mission Statement Guide Grading Rubrics Open Source Reading List Contributor Stakeholder Mapping Exercise

Business Growth & Open Source Support

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UNICEF VENTURE FUND

@unicefinnovate

Humanitarian Drone Testing Corridors �located in Malawi, Kazakhstan and Sierra Leone for testing use cases across transportation of medical supplies, vaccines and collection of imagery and machine learning applications, as well as emergency situations.

Magic Box�UNICEF’s big data platform Magic Box is active in six countries with applications in epidemic responses, mapping schools and measuring poverty.

Project Connect�Mapping school connectivity globally and eliminating the digital divide, increasing opportunity for every community.

RapidPro �Collects data via short message service (SMS) and other communication channels to enable real-time data collection and mass-communication with target end-users, including beneficiaries and frontline workers.

UNICEF Country Offices

UNICEF Country Offices have also been instrumental in both providing and leveraging local networks to provide portfolio companies access to relevant data sets.

Data Networks and Platforms

Core to the investment strategy of the Fund is to build cohorts and scalable platforms of solutions. Startups can leverage UNICEF Ventures’ dedicated technical teams, which hosts and shares data platforms including:

The Venture Fund’s investments strategy is based on a cohort model: Core to the Fund’s approach is the emphasis placed on connecting companies working on similar solutions to each other to develop and grow technology platforms that have the potential to scale across markets.

Data Networks and Platforms

Core to the investment strategy of the Fund is to build cohorts and scalable platforms of solutions. This includes, for example, 3 regional drone corridors actively used for testing of humanitarian use cases across transportation of medical supplies, vaccines and collection of imagery and machine learning applications, as well as emergency situations. UNICEF’s big data platform Magic Box is active in six countries with applications in epidemic responses, mapping schools and measuring poverty. Both platforms have leveraged an increasing number of external corporate partners’ resources, and have provided additional value (through data collection systems, regulated access to testing grounds and data, open source infrastructure and partners) to individual Country Office and start-up investments.

Startups can leverage UNICEF Ventures’ dedicated Data Science team which hosts and shares data platforms including RapidPro and Magic Box, access unique testing environments such as drone corridors, and utilize corporate partners and use cases.

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Maximizing Impact

25%

of Startup solutions deployed in CO/ROs

$4.6m

follow-on funding raised

UNICEF Country

and Regional Office Deployment

FOLLOW-ON FUNDING

PARTNER CONNECTIONS ….

STARTUP

UNICEF has a wide network that can support in scaling, funding, and maximizing the impact of the portfolio of investments.

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Reflection on the Venture Fund’s Technical Assistance

	Mentorship	Follow-on Support
Lesson	Companies requested that business mentorship commence earlier in the programme Programmatic mentors (Health, WASH, ECD, etc.) add instrumental feedback to companies development	Demo Days have historically seen a low turnout and lack of follow-on traction Companies require additional resources for follow-on support, post graduation Not all companies are prepared for follow-on funding immediately after graduation
The way forward	Commence business mentorship immediately after Quarter 1 of the investment When applicable, include programmatic divisions as mentors	Reformat the structure of Demo Days. ie organize according to region rather than technology area Incorporate guidance and resources for Investor Mapping Consider alternative pathways for scaling the portfolio companies, ie Country Office Deployment

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“The workshop with the UNICEF Innovation Fund team had all the best practices of how to build a startup packed in one week. The gathered insights and feedback from mentors are a great learning boost for our team.” -Utopixar

“Mentorship and network! We benefited greatly from the technical mentorship of UNICEF's data scientists Vedran and DoHyung, as well as entrepreneurship mentoring from Bernino Lind. Being able to say we were part of the UNICEF Innovation fund has also opened more opportunities for us to connect with an international market.” -Thinking Machines

"We’d approached open-source pretty tentatively and definitely naively. We were keen to move open-source for transparency and perception but beyond that had no plans around deriving or creating value and we were nervous about the perceived risks. The mentorship from Mike has given us clear direction and a deeper understanding that open-source isn’t a compromise but a communication channel and a way to build a community – and he’s giving us the tools that enable that." -Tupaia

UNICEF Venture Fund: Startup Testimonials

UNICEF Venture Fund Portfolio Company Testimonials

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Thank You

@unicefinnovate