Image of José Manuel Silva, vice president of new business at Natura & Co Latin America, courtesy of LinkedIn.
Brazilian cosmetics and personal care group Natura has launched a corporate venture capital fund called Natura Ventures, Época Negócios reported yesterday.
Jointly managed by Brazilian impact investment firm Vox Capital, the new fund is equipped with R$50m ($9.2m) in initial capital for the first three years.
Natura Ventures intends to back up to 15 startups, providing between R$2m ($0.37m) and R$10m ($1.8m) in seed-stage companies focusing on the circular economy, beauty and customer service technology developers, mainly in Brazil.
“Natura has been doing open innovation for over 20 years, and we had already worked in some way with corporate venture capital but without having an official VC instrument,” José Manuel Silva (pictured), vice president of new business at Natura & Co Latin America, told Época Negócios.
“Over the last nine months, we have worked hard to plan our next 15 years, and we believe that the time has come to have our own instrument, channelled towards our innovation strategies. It gives us greater firepower.” (Translated from Portuguese by Global Corporate Venturing)
Thamara Prado, corporate venturing manager at Natura & Co Latam since January this year, was named one of the GCV Rising Stars 2024. She initially joined the company to lead venture building in March 2022 before taking up a CVC leader role six months later.
Natura & Co runs another CVC subsidiary called Fable Investments, which targets emerging beauty and wellness brands. Its portfolio includes sexual wellness product maker Maude and minority women-focused skincare product provider Eadem.
