Vivriti Agri Impact Bond Fund

India’s agriculture and food ecosystem is vast and dynamic, contributing nearly 20% to GDP and employing over 40% of the workforce. Yet, it is constrained by structural inefficiencies and climate vulnerability, with smallholder farmers bearing the brunt. Each segment highlights both the scale of opportunity and the developmental gaps that must be addressed:

• Agri Inputs

  • Scale/Potential: A large and growing market essential for improving farm productivity across India’s ~150 million smallholders.

  • Context & Impact: Despite this scale, access to affordable, climate-smart inputs remains limited. Reliance on traditional methods leads to low yields, soil degradation, and heightened climate risk.

• Agri Tech

  • Scale/Potential: Rapidly expanding sector leveraging digital solutions to enhance efficiency, transparency, and farmer inclusion.

  • Context & Impact: Penetration remains shallow in rural India. Smallholders face acute information gaps and limited access to finance and markets, directly suppressing incomes and resilience.

• Circular Economy

  • Scale/Potential: Rising importance in managing Agri-waste, reducing emissions, and generating value-added products.

  • Context & Impact: Agriculture contributes significantly to India’s waste and GHG emissions, yet recycling and waste-to-value initiatives are underdeveloped. Without scale-up, inefficiencies will intensify, worsening both environmental and livelihood risks.

• Storage & Logistics

  • Scale/Potential: Critical enabler to reduce India’s 15–20% post-harvest losses and stabilize food supply chains.

  • Context & Impact: Infrastructure gaps especially in cold chain and warehousing result in wasted produce and lost farmer incomes. Smallholders are disproportionately affected due to their limited bargaining power and access.

• Food Services

  • Scale/Potential: A high-growth segment fueled by urbanization, lifestyle shifts, and evolving dietary preferences.

  • Context & Impact: Sustainable sourcing and traceable supply chains are weak, risking inequitable value capture and disconnect between urban markets and rural producers.

Overall Problem Statement:
While India’s agri-food sector presents immense scale and growth potential across inputs, technology, circular economy, logistics, and food services, developmental gaps persist at every stage of the value chain. These gaps disproportionately affect smallholder farmers and are magnified by climate change. Bridging them with climate-resilient, smallholder-focused solutions is essential to unlock productivity, stabilize incomes, reduce waste, and align India’s agri-food ecosystem with global sustainability goals.

Vivriti Asset Management (VAM) is a mid-market focused Indian Private Credit Asset manager. We prioritize thematic funds across Financial Inclusion, Sustainable Agriculture and Climate ecosystems. Having launched India's first ABS fund directed towards financial inclusion in 2023, we have been able to mobilize both developmental and commercial capital as the fund ramped up.

VAM is now launching India’s first fund focused on debt financing to mid-market companies operating in the Agri sector (Vivriti Agri Impact Bond Fund – VAIBF). The fund caters to Agri and Food sectors with a key focus on smallholder farmer ecosystem with an integrated climate perspective.

The proposed $150Mn fund has already received an in-principle approval from a multilateral and two DFIs for $140Mn.

The fund will employ a blended finance structure comprising – Senior, Mezzanine and Junior tranches. VAM as the sponsor of the fund will participate in the Mezzanine tranche. We are currently looking to mobilize first loss capital of $6Mn from like-minded investors in the form of grant or concessional capital. This is necessary to unlock the entire $150Mn fund and hence the most critical piece in the entire structure.

The fund’s key impact KPIs include:

1. Financial inclusion extended to the smallholder farmer - NTC, New jobs created, support extended to women;

2. Reduced/avoided GHG emissions;

3. Clean Energy generated;

VAM has already an experience of over $225Mn investments within the Agri space, with a dedicated Sustainability & Impact team we are able to deliver both impact and returns. 

Key rationale for potential first loss investors to support this project:

1.          Catalytic Role in Mobilizing Capital

2.          High Capital Multiplication Effect - 23x capital mobilization

3.          High Impact Per Dollar Deployed

4.          Speed and Visibility of Deployment

5.          Potential upsizing

The fund is yet to take off