Funding Platform Business Model

Objectives

• Quickly make capital available to farmer orgs (eg, FPOs) to they can invest in collective assets which increase income and deliver co-benefits (esp gender empowerment and climate resilience)

• Aggregate patient capital which is willing to accept a low risk adjusted rate of financial return in exchange for high impact (eg, SDG achievement, greater climate resilience)

  • We cannot provide grants for farmer orgs to purchase assets directly bc of FCRA issues

  • Also, providing recovery of capital (and perhaps some nominal financial return) opens up the universe of available capital

• Repayment terms are flexible and financing serves as training wheels to unlock further subsidies and commercial capital

Open

Funds Flow

• FPO wants to make a 15 lakh investment and has 2 lakh available with members

• 75% subsidy available via govt programs but timeline to access is unknown

• NewCo provides 13 lakh up-front, directly pays the vendors, the asset sits on its books and enters into a lease + transfer agreement with farmer org

• FPO needs to repay [1.2]x the value of the loan to NewCo at which point the asset transfers to them

  • What if the FPO wants to continue renting and not take ownership of the asset? Do we want to offer that?

  • Nominal amount of fixed annual payments which count towards the loan repayment ([2]% of loan value?)

• Asset repayment loan is “mezzanine debt” that sits below (existing and new) senior debt but above any distributions to FPO members

  • Sits below senior debt as we don’t want to impinge their ability to access commercial capital)

  • Need to understand cash flow profile of FPO to figure out expected timeline for repayment which determines NewCo’s IRR

  • Govt subsidy funds, once received, could be used to repay a bulk of the loan  

• NewCo investors could be organized in a blended finance model where more commercial investors get repaid first and philanthropic investors capital is subordinated at thus more at-risk

  • Setting up this repayment waterfall on a per-deal basis could be a pain given small check size so might make sense to syndicate a portfolio of investments over-time which could be organized by theme (eg, water, soil health, gender empowerment, income/livelihood)

Open Questions

• What are the regulatory implications of this approach?

• Would we consider giving access to the asset to a local service provider rather than an FPO? My sense is no if we are focused on strengthening the farmer groups

• What if funding goes to individual members of a farmer org and they can choose how to invest (eg GiveDirectly model)? Not sure that fits with the approach outlined above but flagging as an alternative formulation

• Need to develop some ground rules / guidance on how loan proceeds can be used across various buckets (see below) and % of total proceeds that need to be covered by FPO (eg, skin the game)

  • Durable assets, things that can be used over multiple years (eg, polyhouse, table and solar panel in community nursery)

  • Consumables, things needed regularly (eg, trays, cocopit, vermicompost)

  • Training

  • Maintenance

References

• Rohtash Mal from EM3. Their model is to own the asset and rent it out on a pay per use basis, we are providing up-front financing with flexible repayment schedule with a goal of transferring asset to FPO but still seems like a useful chat

• Tata Power Microgrid may be a useful analog as they fund the infrastructure and make it available at affordable rates locally; in general there may be analogs from the energy space and can speak with CEEW who has done a bunch of work in the space

• Parvesh Sharma, previously head of SFAC, Kamatan, now advisor for Samunnati, promoted lots of FPOs

• Namita Vikas at auctusESG is a board member and could help with biz model development and investor perspective on such model (and connections to prospective investors)

• Sanjay at Dvara eRegistry has good experience lending within FPOs; they are BC and view FPOs as a channel to reach individual farmers, don’t like the idea of lending to FPOs given weak capacity

• RangDe who operate a P2P lending platform. We could sign up as an impact partner, list projects on their site and bring in some retail domestic investors to fund projects. Scheduling time to speak with Sunder (previously at TRIF) to explore further