The Contrarian Bet: Why Investing in India & Africa is "Less Risky Than Silicon Valley VC"

Episode notes

My guest today is Eva Yazhari - General Partner at Beyond Capital Ventures and one of the most original thinkers in the world of impact investing. Trained on Wall Street, Eva left finance to found Beyond Capital, turning her expertise toward building impact-driven markets. Beyond Capital Fund was structured as a nonprofit, a 501(c)3 - not to do charity, but to meet the moment. She describes it as “almost like a Trojan horse” - a structure that made her approach more acceptable to early supporters, even as she operated with full VC rigor. She knew in 2009 that most investors did not yet believe emerging markets could deliver both returns and impact. So she created a structure that was more palatable - donors could get a tax deduction, while she quietly ran the fund like a VC from day one. There were no grants. No concessionary capital. They always behaved like a VC. The result was a top‑quintile track record: a 0.3% loss ratio, markups, and over 100 million people reached through portfolio companies’ products and services. But the nonprofit structure also kept the firm smaller than it needed to be.

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