With many having concerns that no concrete constructive actions will emerge from the racial unrest spurred by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Zeal Capital Partners announced its inaugural diversity investment as part of its Inclusive Investing™ strategy. The early stage growth venture capital firm chose Esusu, a fintech company with a diverse management team and a mission to provide timely services for improving consumer credit scores, lowering eviction rates, and filling vacancies.
“Leveraging the data that they are gathering, Esusu will seek to become the gold standard for assessing creditworthiness in the U.S. and globally,” said Nasir Qadree, Founder and Managing Partner of Zeal Capital Partners.
The investment round was anchored by PayPal and included The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and notable business leaders. The opportunity matched with Zeal’s market-backed Inclusive Investment™ strategy that seeks to tap into the $4.4 trillion economic value associated with under-invested businesses led by diverse management teams.
It also sizes up well with Zeal’s core focus which is the intersection of financial technology and the Future of Work. The former includes credit expansion tools and financial management services and the latter focuses on alternative education pathways, training and development models and ways to lower barriers to financing education. With an inaugural $22.3 million closed fund, Zeal is on its way to make an impact in diversity funding.
“When more than 40 million Americans are unemployed and less than 30% are ‘financially healthy,’ it’s abundantly clear that we need more businesses delivering solutions to bridge the wealth and skills gap at scale,” said Qadree. “I believe that the best entrepreneurs reflect the diversity of this country and the men and women that built its institutions, whether or not they have been credited for their contributions historically.”
Qadree founded the Washington DC-based Zeal Capital Partners following his tenure as Associate Director of AT&T’s Aspire Social Investment Fund, a $400 Million investment vehicle focused on early-stage tech-enabled for-profit education, employment technology, and human capital management businesses. He also served as the US Economic Opportunity Portfolio Lead at Village Capital, sourcing, developing, and investing in high-growth businesses across the FinTech, Health, and Education/Workforce verticals, following his start as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Read about The Diversity Term Sheet that focuses on Investor Diversity and the Push for Diversity on Boards
