AUSTIN, Texas, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- MPOWER Ventures, LP, a socially committed venture fund dedicated to investing in solutions that empower the underserved worldwide, today announced a commitment worth $100 million to invest in seed and early stage companies developing financial services and products for underserved markets. MPOWER Ventures also announced its first investment in MPOWER Labs, Inc., a global research and development incubator created to generate technology and product innovations and accelerate the development of MPOWER Ventures portfolio companies.

The capital committed to MPOWER Ventures comprises personal investments by MPOWER Ventures principals Roy Sosa, Bertrand Sosa and Jorge Vergara Madrigal. The Sosas pioneered the prepaid debit market -- projected to reach $470 billion by 2010(1) -- as co-founders of NetSpend. Vergara is the owner of Grupo Omnilife and the Chivas soccer clubs of Guadalajara, Mexico and U.S. Major League Soccer.

"Though we started in the realm of financial services, we have come to believe there are many industries in which market failures have left a majority of the world without adequate choices to improve their lives, including healthcare, education, and energy," said Roy Sosa, managing partner, MPOWER Ventures and chief executive officer, MPOWER Labs."We believe that strategic investment can fuel the development of private-sector solutions to these persistent social problems, and to that end we created MPOWER Ventures as a venture fund run by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs who believe in the common cause of empowerment and want to devote their passion for innovation to making positive changes in the world."

Seeding Social Capitalists for Social Change

Fueled by the belief that the combination of innovation, collaboration and disruptive technology can stimulate fundamental change, MPOWER Ventures seeks to free latent economic potential and generate meaningful social impact in underserved markets around the world. Recognizing that underserved markets hold great promise and great risk, MPOWER Ventures invests in accordance with three core principles designed to ensure portfolio companies succeed in achieving their business and social objectives:

• Extended Investment Horizon -- Maintains a 15-year investment horizon to give portfolio companies adequate time to overcome barriers to entry, to make necessary investments for meaningful social impact, and to become self-sustaining enterprises before returning capital to investors
  
• Active Investment Philosophy -- An investment-driven fund that
  activates committed resources only after identifying an investment
  opportunity and nurtures close partnerships with founding entrepreneurs
  
• Dual Bottom Line -- Measures performance in dual terms by the revenues portfolio companies return and social impact they produce and reinvests returns to advance new models for social change.

Rethinking Financial Services Worldwide
Through a close partnership with MPOWER Labs, MPOWER Ventures amplifies the financial and social impact of its investments and accelerates the introduction of financial services to underserved markets. More than two billion people worldwide lack access to basic financial services.(2) To fulfill its mission, MPOWER Labs ensures portfolio companies are fully operational from inception, offering three core shared assets to minimize operating costs, rapidly scale operations and create combinations of products and services that multiply the numbers of underserved consumers they can reach and retain:

• Technical and Business Expertise -- A team of specialists and
  consultants advising portfolio companies and building infrastructure in
  technology; finance and operations; compliance and legal; risk modeling
  and data analysis; human resources; business development; and marketing
  and branding
  
• Technology Platform -- A set of proprietary systems available to all portfolio companies with global support capabilities for multiple
  regions, geographies and currencies, including a payment transaction
  processing platform equipped to support a range of new and emerging
  payment solutions; customer service and back office support; and
  product fulfillment services for retail and direct-to-consumer products
  
• Research and Development -- An in-house research department overseeing research partnerships and initiatives and exploring concepts for new products and services and examining the factors behind market failures and exclusion.

(1) PELORUS Group, "Plastic Promise," The Economist, 6/6/2006
(2) VRL KnowledgeBank, "Strategies for Banking the Unbanked: A Global
Market Opportunity," Ray Cain, 1/1/2008

About MPOWER Ventures
MPOWER Ventures (http://www.mpowerventures.com) is a double-bottom-line venture fueled by the belief that the combination of innovation, collaboration and disruptive technology can stimulate fundamental change that frees latent economic potential and generates meaningful social impact. MPOWER Ventures identifies and invests in early-stage businesses creating products and services for populations excluded as a result of large-scale market failures. MPOWER Ventures currently focuses its investment portfolio in financial services with investments in international payments, mobile payments and retail financial services.

About MPOWER Labs
MPOWER Labs (http://www.mpowerlabs.com) is a global research and development incubator and business accelerator serving MPOWER Ventures and its portfolio companies. By providing technical expertise for product development and incubation as well as direct business operations, MPOWER Labs enables the portfolio companies to rapidly scale operations and enter the market. MPOWER Labs focuses primarily on the global financial services market that currently excludes more than 2 billion people around the world from access to basic financial services. MPOWER Labs is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in Mexico City, Mexico and Dublin, Ireland.

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