Indigo Financiera

Mexico-U.S. hometown clubs and social networks

Liz Ryan blogs on Indigo and Tierra Natal in her October posting of "Mexico-U.S. hometown clubs and social networks.

She writes about the growing hometown association movement:

"I say politically active, because the formation of HTAs is a grassroots movement awakening to the huge amount of power it has. Mexican-Americans send more than $23 billion a year to Mexico, mostly through individual and family ties. The HTAs or Clubs de Oriundos, by consolidating some of that money, are gaining political power. We'll see in the next few years how blogs and social network software will help that process. Other countries may also begin using social software to make the power of their remittance economies more transparent."

A Vision of Grassroots Venture Capital

When I was a venture capitalist, I was often asked what it would take to create a venture capital industry in Mexico or Indonesia or just about anywhere outside of Silicon Valley.   There were often many very good reasons why it couldn't or hadn't happen - deal flow, amount of money that needed to be invested, cost of managing a fund, a service provider ecosystem, etc. 

2. Vision and Mission

Our Vision

• Create a for profit solidarity branded, high volume, low cost financial services company for unbanked diaspora communities

• Create a non-profit micro-equity venture fund that makes successful and profitable investments in microfinance institutions and small and medium size enterprises founded or managed by transnational workers or entrepreneurs in their communities of origin.

Our Mission

• To transform transnational workers from passive senders of money to active grass-roots micro-investors for their home countries.

1. What is Indigo?

Introduction

Indigo is a radical proposal to develop a micro-private equity fund whose source of capital comes from profits generated by a remittances service business initially targeted toward the US Mexican diaspora. Inspired by the pioneering company Working Assets, the remittances service provides a sustainable business model that allows the Indigo fund to invest in microfinance institutions and small and medium size enterprises and take more risks in this underserved market.

 

Our belief is that diaspora are an underutilized resource for fighting global poverty.  Remittances are one of the tangible touch points by which the diasporas stay connected to their extended families and communities in their home countries.  At present, remittances are used for meeting basic family needs – food, clothing, education, basic healthcare.  However, if looked at through a different lens, these funds are also a form of micro-investment, a form of extremely informal small scale angel capital.  The purpose of Indigo is to amplify and augment these angel investments through an aggregated investment fund that is built indirectly by remittance fees paid by the poor that in turn invests in them.

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