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elea’s FOUNDATION AND OPER ATING MODEL 89

Coffee Circle was our second major investment in the global- agricultural-value-chain investment theme. Prior to this investment, we had already made a successful investment in Pakka (www.pakka.ch), an impact enterprise that imported organic and fair-trade-labelled cashew nuts from India (and other agricultural products from other poor coun- tries) into German-speaking Europe with great success. We could, there- fore, already demonstrate substantial know-how on how to cope with the typical challenges facing early stage agricultural trade investments, such as balancing sales and production, organizing affordable working capital, and complementing founder personality skills with professional execu- tives that have relevant experience in the field. Dharma Life was a particularly appealing investment opportunity because of its huge impact potential to address poverty in rural India by means of a highly innovative model. Having already been exposed to several last-mile distribution initiatives (e.g., through an effort to improve the effectiveness of mom-and-pop shops in Bolivia), we could contribute substantial expertise about the opportunities and barriers of serving base- of-the-pyramid customers with socially impactful goods. Finally, BagoSphere was especially interesting because of its success rate in procuring employment for poor youth from rural areas in the Philippine provinces based on its holistic approach – from selection of students to training and finding employers. This approach was in contrast to many less-than-successful attempts, where European vocational skills development models were adopted in poor countries without sufficiently considering characteristics and constraints within the local context. Many steps that are used to perform due diligence within the field of philanthropic investing are common to the evaluation of an investment opportunity in any field. However, when assessing philanthropic impact investment candidates, there are some specific aspects unique to impact investing that make due diligence particularly challenging and deserve special attention. In our experience, there are at least four major differ- ences as compared to common due diligence practice. First, factual information as a basis for due diligence is usually thin, not well documented, and difficult to obtain. Often business plans lack a substantial analysis of facts, and sometimes even the most basic financial statements are not available or are of poor quality. Much of this is related to the early development stage of these enterprises, the lack of professional