Karmijn Kapitaal was founded by Désirée van Boxtel, Hadewych Cels and Cilian Jansen Verplanke. We share our admiration for entrepreneurs and we have an extensive background in making investments. In 2010 we saw an opportunity for an investment fund that invests in companies led by women and men.
We believe in the power of combining different people, perspectives, priorities, and leadership visions. To us diversity goes beyond simply counting men and women or backgrounds. Years of experience have taught us how diversity can work, when it can lead to excellent teams and organisations. A shared vision is crucial.
We therefore invest in companies led by mixed management teams with a balanced combination of women and men. Especially then different perspectives thrive. These different perspectives lead to better and more balanced decision-making. Research shows that companies with a mixed management team perform better resulting in stronger financial performance.
We are also entrepreneurs, focused on continuity, and we’ve learned that diversity is an important success factor. When an environment is created where everyone can do what he or she is good at and where different leadership styles work together, better results are achieved.
Of course we don’t only strive for diversity in our portfolio companies, but also in our own team. We also like to work with a mixed team when working with external consultants.
Karmijn believes that investing covers more than traditional issues such as finance and efficiency. We invest in SMEs run by (gender) diverse management teams and also focus on the “softer” aspects of entrepreneurship, such as care for employees and customers, long-term vision and the stimulation of creativity and innovation. Other sustainability issues are also important factors for strong investment performance and business success. When implementing ESG, we try to find an optimum between long-term value creation, competitiveness and managing key risks. Karmijn works together with portfolio companies identify specific ESG themes and actions. We take initiative to identify key risk factors and how portfolio companies can add value. Doing so we work closely together with the company.
Our Karmijn Responsible Investment Policy describes what is expected from Karmijn as an investor and what Karmijn expects from its portfolio companies.
As a signatory of the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment, we commit to the importance of sustainable investment and sustainable investment practices in the broader context of global sustainability goals that we set as a society, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
We are a Certified B Corporation.
