Human flourishing across  emerging markets.

About us

Kaizenvest is an emerging markets asset manager tackling the most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges through strategic investment.

Since our founding in 2011, we havedeployed over $175 millionacross private equity (PE)and blended finance structures across South & South-East Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa.

What began as India's first education-focused private equity fund has evolved into a comprehensive human economic mobility strategy.

Meet Our Team
Investment Thesis

We invest in growth-stage companies building the education-to employment pipelines, improving access to quality healthcare, and financial inclusion that unlock human economic mobility across Asia.

Investment Thesis

We invest in growth-stage companies building the education-to-employment pipelines, improving access to quality healthcare, and financial inclusion that unlock human economic mobility across Asia.

The AI era has arrived, but it is anchored in a demographic reality: the future of the global economy will be written in Mumbai, Manila, Jakarta, and Lagos. As AI reshapes the nature of work, our focus is on ensuring the 2.5 billion people of the next generation have the tools to be AI-enabled, not AI-displaced. To ignore the youth of these emerging economies is to create a permanent AI-underclass and invite a global mismatch that the world’s social fabric cannot afford to ignore.

By 2050, 85% of the global workforce increase will come from Africa alone. Investing in job creation across Asia and Africa isn't just a moral imperative; it is the only way to ensure that the AI revolution leapfrogs development gaps rather than widening them. We don't just fund companies; our goal is to fund the architects of the next global middle class.

By 2050, there will be more people over age 60 than under age 25 for the first time in recorded human history (Guseth, 2015). Most countries, including many low-to-middle-income countries (LMIC) like India, Vietnam, and the Philippines have seen a fall in fertility rate below the 2.1 replacement rate. The “demographic dividend” narrative doesn’t hold true anymore — and these countries must now make provisions for an ageing society; this includes providing access to quality healthcare. Health systems can only function with health workers; improving health service coverage and realizing the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is dependent on their availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality. WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle income countries.

SMEs are the backbone of South and Southeast Asia, supporting over 600 million livelihoods.

While large firms dominate the capital cities, SMEs drive the economies of tier-2 and tier-3 regions by creating local jobs and fueling local demand.

We are entering an era where AI will likely shrink company headcounts but explode the number of companies by democratizing entrepreneurship.

Our mission is to build the financial rails that enable these enterprises—whether they are traditional family businesses or tech-enabled startups—to thrive and spur the next decade of regional growth.

Our Belief

Our raison d’être is the conviction that social and economic mobility is driven by access to quality education and healthcare for individuals, and the financial inclusion of SMEs—a nation’s primary engine for job creation. We back the visionary founders building the companies that deliver these outcomes.

Portfolio at a glance

Capital that Drives
Job Creation

Our investment strategy has centred on backing category-defining entrepreneurs running growth-stage enterprises in the impact sectors. By creating high-quality jobs, these founders drive the human economic mobility that underpins both human flourishing and consistent investor returns.

Investing in our
founders.

Investing in our founders.

Innovators are the engine of job creation and social mobility. With 15+ years of sector-specific cycles navigated, we provide more than just capital; we work with founders to achieve sustainable growth in the development economy.

We started Toppr with a mission to make learning personalised. Toppr is built with a 360 degree view to be a one-stop learning solution for K-12 students. We are focused on our goal of delivering personalised learning to 100M students online.

Using technology to deliver personalised learning at scale has very interesting use cases. At Toppr, we have built tech such as ML based adaptive practice, custom syllabus creation and live doubt solving engines. I am eager to see increased adoption of tech in education and new use cases emerge in the coming years

Zishaan Hayath

(Founder & CEO, Toppr)

Hemanth Goteti

(Co-founder, Toppr)

Poverty, as it dehumanizes and eats into people's very dignity, remains the most important problem of our world. Quality education on the other hand is the most effective means to bring people out of poverty. It is thus our responsibility to bring quality education, the silver bullet to poverty, to the poor, to those who need it the most.

Chito Salazar

President & CEO, PHINMA Education Holdings

Create and sustain a system where the children at our schools, their parents, and my colleagues at work get on with their day with a sense of joy! Work and life then balance themselves naturally.

AK Srikanth

CEO, KLAY

Varthana exists to transform affordable education in order to unlock the full potential of India's massive, young population.

Steve Hardgrave

Co-founder and CEO, Varthana

I started YOLA to offer more opportunities to students and support them to have better access to foreign education. For me, education wasn’t solely about teaching. I want to leverage what I do best and pass on my values and experiences to thousands of students in Vietnam.

Khoa Pham

Co-founder & Chairman, YOLA

In the times of rapidly declining quality of higher education in India, we wanted to sift through the glitzy hype of the education business to focus on fundamentals of how learning truly happens for those looking to compete with the best globally. That meant having a single-minded focus on students who look upon us to help them transform their careers and indeed, lives. That meant putting together a strong in-house team of passionate teachers with global experience, dynamic curricula at the cutting edge of digital advancements, and global partnerships that allow us to bring such high quality education to a larger number of people. This means an undying commitment to innovation and ethics in all aspects of our work.

Sridhar Pappu

Executive VP-Academics, INSOFE

Impact Rooted in Data.

Our portfolio demonstrates that financial excellence and social scale go hand-in-hand. To date, our companies have met rigorous performance benchmarks while expanding educational access to 10.5 million learners and generating 9,100+ jobs across Asia and Africa.

Read our full 2025 Impact Report

Deep-dive into methodology, SDG alignment, and company-level performance data.

Download Report

152,000+

Student Enrollments with 70% from low-income households.

3.1M+

Students reached through school financing. 60% from low-income communities.

10M+

Tonnes of waste collected & processed. 144k tonnes of CO2 offset.

5,000+

Students placed in foreign universities.

80,000+

Graduates and 96% placement rate.

18,000+

Students acquired English-Language training

Read our full 2025 Impact Report

Deep-dive into methodology, SDG alignment, and company-level performance data.

Download Report
Achievement
10.5 M+
Access to Education
Achievement
37%
Women Leadership
Achievement
5,000+
Women Working
Achievement
> 2x
Third Party Capital
Achievement
9,100+
Direct Jobs
Achievement
3.9 M+
Economically Weaker Students
Achievement
55%
Women Workforce
Achievement
10.5 M+
Access to Education
Achievement
37%
Women Leadership
Achievement
5,000+
Women Working
Achievement
> 2x
Third Party Capital
Achievement
9,100+
Direct Jobs
Achievement
3.9 M+
Economically Weaker Students
Achievement
55%
Women Workforce
Achievement
10.5 M+
Access to Education
Achievement
37%
Women Leadership
Achievement
5,000+
Women Working
Achievement
> 2x
Third Party Capital
Achievement
9,100+
Direct Jobs
Achievement
3.9 M+
Economically Weaker Students
Achievement
55%
Women Workforce

Meet The Team

Global Presence, Local Expertise. With strategic bases in APAC, Africa, and the GCC our team is embedded in the world’s premier innovation hubs. We bring together visionaries and operators united by a single mission: harnessing technology to transform how the world learns and earns.

Hester Spiegel

Venture Partner

Jens Zimmermann

Advisor

Sunil-Sinha

Advisor

Ryoya Hoshino

Education Advisor

Kyoya Okazawa

Advisor

Koji Takahashi

Advisor

Vicki Phillips

Advisor

Alef Meulenberg

Advisor

Oliver Dick

Nirav Khambhati

Affiliate Partner

Siddhi Ved

Finance

Gaurav Jain

Partner

Hester Spiegel

Venture Partner

Jens Zimmermann

Advisor

Sunil-Sinha

Advisor

Ryoya Hoshino

Education Advisor

Kyoya Okazawa

Advisor

Koji Takahashi

Advisor

Vicki Phillips

Advisor

Alef Meulenberg

Advisor

Oliver Dick

Nirav Khambhati

Affiliate Partner

Siddhi Ved

Finance

Gaurav Jain

Partner

Hester Spiegel

Venture Partner

Jens Zimmermann

Advisor

Sunil-Sinha

Advisor

Ryoya Hoshino

Education Advisor

Kyoya Okazawa

Advisor

Koji Takahashi

Advisor

Vicki Phillips

Advisor

Alef Meulenberg

Advisor

Oliver Dick

Nirav Khambhati

Affiliate Partner

Siddhi Ved

Finance

Gaurav Jain

Partner

Raj Shastri

Advisor

Alex Ng

Advisor

Naina Batra

Advisor

Claudia Zeisberger

Advisor

Mike Michalec

Advisor

Matthias Tietze

Advisor

John Tan

Venture Partner

Shaun Wee

AVP

Marjon Irani

Partner

Jetu Lalvani

Managing Partner

Sandeep Aneja

Founder And Managing Partner

Raj Shastri

Advisor

Alex Ng

Advisor

Naina Batra

Advisor

Claudia Zeisberger

Advisor

Mike Michalec

Advisor

Matthias Tietze

Advisor

John Tan

Venture Partner

Shaun Wee

AVP

Marjon Irani

Partner

Jetu Lalvani

Managing Partner

Sandeep Aneja

Founder And Managing Partner

Raj Shastri

Advisor

Alex Ng

Advisor

Naina Batra

Advisor

Claudia Zeisberger

Advisor

Mike Michalec

Advisor

Matthias Tietze

Advisor

John Tan

Venture Partner

Shaun Wee

AVP

Marjon Irani

Partner

Jetu Lalvani

Managing Partner

Sandeep Aneja

Founder And Managing Partner

Our Commitment To Research

Our investment philosophy is informed by years of collaboration with the likes of World Bank, ADB, and UNICEF. These partnerships have built a proprietary body of knowledge that guides our strategy and ensures our capital creates meaningful change

Kaizenvest & INSEAD Symposium 2018

Staying True to the Social Problem

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