Awhi Fund
The Awhi Fund is now fully deployed and closed for further investors.
The Awhi Fund was built to shift the market, not fit into it.
As New Zealand’s first impact venture capital fund, we intentionally designed Awhi to meet the realities of an emerging impact enterprise sector, characterised by limited deal flow and small, seed-stage opportunities.
So we kept it small. Purpose-built. Designed to deliver strong returns with demonstrable impact.
Aims of the Fund
The Awhi Fund backed early-stage impact enterprises with growth capital and hands-on support to scale. It offered values-aligned investors the opportunity to fund ventures where impact was embedded, measurable, and grew with revenue. The portfolio reflected a commitment to impact discipline, ventures with clear social or environmental outcomes, and founders who deeply understood the problems they were solving.
Awhi Fund Portfolio
Kara Technologies
Arash, the co-founder of Kara Tech, lost his hearing in his left ear while studying at the University of Auckland. This was the beginning of his journey to investigate and understand the issues facing the Deaf community.
On his journey, he found that there was a huge accessibility gap of content for the community. With more than 70 million Deaf people in the world who do not have proper access to education and other services, Kara Technologies aims to reduce these accessibility issues.
Grounded Packaging
Ben Grant and Josh Kempton started Grounded Packaging in 2019 with the intent of shifting the world away from a ‘single-use’ economy to a ‘circular economy’ where everything that is used is 100% recyclable, reusable, and/or compostable. Grounded Packaging aim to be one of the leading global supply platforms for sustainable packaging in food and e-commerce.
Cogo
Cogo helps people and small businesses take climate action, one transaction at a time. Their platform connects financial and accounting data to carbon insights, emissions tracking tools and personalised tips on how better spending decisions can improve your carbon footprint.
Rooy
‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it’ - Rooy’s end-to-end measurement solution gives organisations the tools they need to report, communicate and improve their impact everyday.
Ooooby
There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farming households globally. Despite being a major contributor to the massive $8T food and agriculture industry, these farmers and producers often barely scrape a living.
Ooooby’s vision is for these small-scale farmers and producers to have viable businesses and enjoy a better quality of life. Their solution is to unite millions of small-scale food producers across a single integrated and open marketplace.
Regen
In New Zealand, significant regulatory change is coming into effect to manage nutrients and water. These, along with a building negativity surrounding dairying and the environment, mean farmers must act or face major restrictions on farming practice.
Regen’s purpose is to improve the environmental, economic and sustainability outcomes of farming, ultimately contributing to a world where farming is synonymous with kaitiakitanga (sustainable environmental stewardship).