Making a Case for Patient Capital

In 2002, after nearly 10 years of running a nonprofit to help poor farmers in India get the most out of their land, Amitabha Sadangi was frustrated. Government aid to alleviate poverty had largely bypassed individuals earning less than $1 a day. Instead, those funds subsidized large farms and were invested in technology Sadangi says the farmers didn’t want. Rather than battle bureaucracy to redirect the money more appropriately, Sadangi had a novel solution. Convinced the farmers would benefit more as informed buyers than as passive recipients of charity, he adapted a water-saving drip irrigation system to their needs and sold it at an affordable price.

Acumen Fund, the nonprofit venture capital fund I lead, gave Sadangi’s International Development Enterprises India a $100,000 grant to experiment with his product. Then in 2008 we invested $1 million in Global Easy Water Products (GEWP), a for-profit spinoff Sadangi created in western India to further increase the technology’s reach and to sell other products to the poor.