About Inspired Evolution

Triple-Bottom-Line Investing and Emerging Natural Capital Markets

NEWS

03 October 2008
Press Clipping :: Business Report

The global credit crunch is expected to support the long term trend towards investment clean technologies (cleantech), according to the team behind South Africa\s first cleantech fund, launched this week. This was because opportunities for private investors and operators would grow as constrained public balance sheets pushed up the utility prices such as water and energy, heightening the need to drive efficiencies, Nicholas Parker a US based adviser to the Evolution One fund, said yesterday. "Increasingly this is about economics...and not compliance with government regulations," he added. Parker, the chairman of the Cleantech Group, pioneered clean technology as an investment category six years ago and participated in one of the first solar initial public offerings (IPOs). Since then about $20 billion (R166 billion) has flowed into the solar IPOs around the world and up to 50 solar companies are waiting to go public. "I don't think any of us could have imagined how quickly this would grow." Parker said. "The game is on and you're seeing very large sums of money [flowing in]." Since 2005, global investment in cleantech venture capital, IPOs, and mergers acquisitions has amounted to nearly $80 billion. The Evolution One fund intends to direct some of the investment toward southern African cleantech businesses. primarily those in growth and expansionary phases. It expects to announce its first investment by year-end. Evolution One has raised R400 million internationally thus far and was optimistic yesterday that it would raise another R600 million by mid-2009, preferably from local institutions. Iraj Abedian, the chairman of Inspired Evolution Investment Management, which manages the fund, said it was engaging with major local pension funds and institutions. Like their international counterparts, they were initially cautious about investing in a new territory. Parker said "money foes where money knows", but he believed the lag in cleantech investment would change "very quickly" in South Africa in the next two years. The fund manager did not expect volatile world markets to detract from its local fundraising plans, pointing out that the volatility of the cleantech sector was 'a lot lower' than many other asset classes. Parker expected 1.5 million skilled jobs to be created in the cleantech sector over the next five years. The Evolution One fund is eyeing several cleantech investments in southern Africa, although it won't yet identify the companies involved.

10 October 2008
Press Clipping :: Engineering News
New fund homes in on clean-technology prospects By: Christy van der Merwe

03 October 2008
Press Clipping :: SA Good News
New fund to invest R1 billion in Africa's clean technologies

03 October 2008
Press Clipping :: Business Report
Credit crunch to support cleantech investment funds By: Ingi Saldo

30 September 2008
Evolution One Fund Launches
Inspired Evolution Investment Management is delighted to announce the launch of South Africa’s first ever clean technology (‘cleantech’)investment fund: The Evolution One Fund is a 10 year private equity fund targeted to grow to ZAR 1 billion by mid-July 2009.

30 September 2008
Press Clipping :: GreenTechMedia
South African Cleantech Fund Raises ZAR$400M

view the launch photos