A strong venture capital market requires a smooth exit market. But the slowdown in mergers and acquisitions and IPOs has made exits rare, complicating VC managers’ efforts to return capital to their investors.

Active Impact Investments, based in Vancouver, has achieved three exits in its venture capital portfolio in the past month. The firm, a certified B Corp, notched an exit with Canada’s Keela, which was acquired last month by Aplos, a Fresno-based software developer for nonprofit and faith-based organizations.

Active invested in Keela through its first $10 million venture fund in 2018. The company has helped thousands of global nonprofit organizations raise $2 billion from donors since 2013.

Another Active Impact portfolio company, New York-based Sustain.Life,was acquired in a $100 million deal last month. Sustain.Life builds software to help businesses track and report emissions from their operations and supply chains. 

Alternative exits

Separately, Lightrock, the impact arm of the London-based private banking and asset management group of the royal family of Liechtenstein, achieved an exit in Ummeed Housing Finance, which provides loans to low- and middle-income families and small businesses in India’s smaller cities.

Lightrock invested in Ummeed via its $900 million tech-driven impact fund. Ummeed raised $76 million in a Series F round last month, giving an exit to Lightrock through a secondary sale.

Seeding secondaries

US-based North Sky Capital, which launched the world’s first impact secondaries fund in 2019, closed its ninth impact secondaries fund last week with $250 million.

“Market conditions are terrific for secondaries buyers right now, especially in impact sectors,” said North Sky’s Tom Jorgensen. “On the GP-led side, there is a large and expanding universe of investable companies that meet our impact parameters and need our growth capital.”