The Barcelona-based impact investor’s new fund includes investment protection mechanisms provided by state-owned COFIDES to attract private funding.
Ship2B Ventures has launched its BSocial Impact Fund II, achieving a first close of €65m, with support from the European Investment Fund (EIF), Axis and Banco Sabadell, among other investors.
The social impact venture capital manager said the blended finance vehicle, which it described as Spain’s largest social impact venture capital fund, has a target total size of €80m. The fund will invest in startups targeting improvements in the lives of vulnerable groups and the elderly, decarbonisation of industry and natural ecosystem regeneration.
Ship2B now has more than €120m of assets under management, after its previous BSocial Impact Fund I raised €55m. That fund produced a portfolio of more than 30 firms, a number that it plans to match with the second fund.
The EIF, a previous investor in Ship2B, is the anchor investor for the new fund. Its investment is sourced from the social impact equity product of InvestEU, a European Union programme aiming to mobilise over €372bn in investment by 2027.
Banco Sabadell and Axis, which both invested in the first fund, are investing again. Axis is a private capital manager owned by ICO, Spain’s official credit institute.
New investors
New investors in the second fund include insurance and pensions firm VidaCaixa, Catalonian public development bank Institut Català de Finances (ICF) and several Spanish family offices.
Spanish state-owned COFIDES will also join the investor group, once legal processes have been completed. Barcelona City Council, though its Barcelona Investment Fund, is also due to invest shortly. Investment amounts were not disclosed.
The second fund involves a blended finance structure, under which institutional capital is combined with investment-protection mechanisms, including first-loss cover, and technical assistance to portfolio companies. Both will be provided through the Fondo de Impacto Social (FIS), an EU-backed social impact fund managed by COFIDES.
Ship2B said the first-loss tranche represented crucial catalytic capital to attract new private investors, adding that its investment strategy aimed to show that impact and market-rate returns were compatible.
Diverse portfolio
The firm recently formed part of the investor group for Qida, a Sabadell-based startup seeking to improve the lives of older people by developing tools to allow integrated care across the health and social sectors. Qida’s overall funding round of €37m, announced in early November, was one of the largest for a Spanish impact-driven company.
In June, Ship2B Ventures said it had invested €13.8m in Aortyx, which has developed a treatment for aortic dissection, a potentially fatal condition which affects around 50,000 people in Europe alone.
Other successful investments from Ship2B’s existing portfolio include Ocean Ecostructures, a Barcelona-based firm developing technology to restore and improve marine ecosystems, and 011H, also Barcelona-based, which develops low carbon building solutions. Another investee firm, Madrid-based Dcycle, provides a platform for ESG data management and sustainability impacts assessment.
