IGNIA Ready to Become Pioneer GIIRS Fund

MONTERREY, Mexico, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- IGNIA Fund I, Latin America's first impact investing venture fund, is pleased to announce that it has been selected as one of only 12 funds to test a new rating system, the Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS).  Last week, at the US Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, the Obama administration endorsed this new rating system which has been developed by B Corporation, a nonprofit organization that certifies companies that adhere to stringent social and environmental standards. GIIRS was launched in January 2010 to provide investors with comparable impact ratings and analysis across companies and funds.  The rating system's primary objective is to enable investors to compare the relative impact of different investment opportunities and facilitate a marketplace where more capital can be channeled to higher impact investments.  

As a pioneer of the GIIRS rating system, IGNIA will evaluate its enterprises on a scale of one to five stars based on its performance on five dimensions: leadership, employees, products and services, community and environment.  IGNIA has high hopes that others in the impact investing community will follow suit and adopt GIIRS as the emerging standard for assessing and communicating the social and environmental impact of their investments.

"IGNIA firmly believes in the importance of developing common metrics to add transparency and accountability to the impact investing industry.  We feel that contributing to the creation of this new market system is fundamentally linked to why IGNIA was established in the first place" states Alvaro Rodriguez, the fund's Co-founder and Managing Partner.  

Internally, IGNIA already has a Social and Environmental Management System in place, which evaluates its portfolio companies through metrics on its activities and outputs.  In addition, IGNIA is preparing to adopt Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) that are being developed by the Global Investing Initiative Network (GIIN).  IRIS is a framework for measuring social and environmental performance based on a set of common indicators and definitions.

IGNIA Fund I, L.P. is a venture capital fund that invests in promising entrepreneurs with scalable businesses that deliver high value propositions to the base of the socioeconomic pyramid.  It invests in sectors that have a disproportionate impact on improving the welfare of the poor, such as healthcare, nutrition, housing, basic utilities and education. For more information, please visit http://www.ignia.com.mx

SOURCE Ignia Partners LLC