Capital 4 Development Partners B.V. (C4D Partners) is an Investment Manager focusing on financing Small and Medium Enterprises (“SMEs”) in emerging countries. C4D Partners offers various forms of private equity, hybrid debt, and venture debt financing to (early) growth-stage SMEs.
These are C4D Partners’ (hereinafter may be referred to as “us” or “we”) website disclosures in terms of REGULATION (EU) 2019/2088 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 27 November 2019 on sustainability‐related disclosures in the financial services sector (SFDR).
This section provides detailed sustainability-related disclosures regarding the C4D Partners’ socially responsible impact funds categorized under Article 8, of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (“SFDR”). Our funds align with a gender lens investing approach and play a crucial role in Impact Funds in India, contributing to positive social and environmental impacts by investing 100% of the funds in impact-driven companies.
These financial products promote environmental and social characteristics but does not have as its objective a sustainable investment. They are however investing 100% of the funds in impact-driven companies.
The Funds’ exclusion list also prevents any investment in tobacco, casinos and equivalent enterprises, distilled alcoholic beverages and related products, pornography and weapons and ammunition.
The Impact Fund is sector agnostic; however, the Fund intends to focus on sectors such as agriculture & agri-processing; sustainable food; retail & consumer goods; energy & environment; healthcare; skilling & education; sustainable cities; financial inclusion; and any other sector with strong impact on the marginalized communities and/or rural population. Investments are made debt, mezzanine and in private equity or equity-like, between 0.5-2M$ as first investment.
100% of investments are promoting environmental impact and social impact. Further, 100% investments are in impact-driven enterprises, i.e., enterprises that have the purpose to achieve societal or environmental impact by providing entrepreneurial solutions to societal challenges.
C4D Partners team constantly monitors the environmental and social characteristics and performance of the Funds. For that purpose, portfolio companies are required to report on ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) once per year. The ESG reporting of each portfolio company is assessed by the C4D Partners team. The results and findings are examined with the investment managers, who bring ESG risks and opportunities to the attention of the Board of the respective company.
The ESG Framework used to evaluate yearly our investments, as well as the due diligences conducted ensure that the standards and practices are in line with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The ESG data used by C4D Partners has two main sources:
One limitation on data collection is that early-stage companies do not always measure all required ESG data. C4D Partners works with its portfolio companies to ensure that they measure this data over the course of its holding period.
As the Fund’s investments are held for several years, C4D Partners considers it a priority to establish and maintain a trust within a good working relationship with the portfolio company as a safeguard considering the limitations described in this section.
C4D Partners conducts an ESG due diligence prior to any investment. Such due diligence includes a range of questions relating to environmental, social, or governance related aspects. The due diligence is conducted through direct interviews with the top management, using a proprietary questionnaire and ad-hoc questions following research on the most material ESG topics in the company’s sub-sector.
The outcome of the due diligence, including any information on sustainability risks revealed through the due diligence, guides C4D Partners’ investment decisions.
A key part of our approach to ESG is our role in actively engaging with portfolio companies to influence their behavior to improve the long-term sustainability of their business model.
In addition to our Due Diligence process and our annual ESG questionnaire, we engage with companies to help them design their sustainability strategy and support them in its implementation. This includes trainings on ESG, periodic meetings on ESG and sustainability strategy, introduction to the right providers and discussion on ESG topics at the board level.
The documents below have been created by our Investment Managers. They contain more detailed information on the:
We will also publish and maintain information about our Sustainability Risk Policies (Article 3) and the integration of the same in our investment decision-making process. In addition to financial risks, how and to what extent do we consider the negative impact of sustainability risks on financial returns.
These disclosures will further tell you where C4D Partners do, consider The Adverse Sustainability Impacts of our decisions at entity level (Article 4). It will briefly describe our process for contextually considering adverse impacts.
These disclosures also explain our Remuneration Policy (Article 5).
