Our Journey

Gray Matters Capital was founded in 2006 by serial entrepreneur, Bob Pattillo. After a 20-year stint in the industrial real-estate sector in the United States, he began testing the waters in microfinance. The desire to improve the lives of low-income families, while generating financial returns, took him to India where Gray Matters Capital then forayed into education.

In 2007, GMC began some of the first efforts to finance affordable schools with The Indian School Finance Company ( ISFC) and turned its focus toward quality education for underserved populations.GMC has now replicated ISFC in Pakistan with the Taleem (TFCL) and in Nigeria with EdFin Bank. 

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GMC added a gender lens approach to our strategy in 2013 to help advance gender equality and improve women’s economic empowerment. In 2017, GMC launched colabs and edLABS to fill the seed stage funding gap for business models serving women and targeting innovation in the future of learning and work.

Over the years GMC has invested in a number of scalable ventures that demonstrate the convergence of high social impact with strong financial returns. Our investments have cut across multiple industries such as mobile technology, healthcare, microfinance, energy, and education. 

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Besides investing capital, Gray Matters Capital’s history also includes starting new ventures, such as Gray Ghost Ventures, Short Term Liquidity Fund, Gray Ghost Microfinance Fund, GGV Doen Cooperatief, First Light Ventures, Gray Matters India, Gray Matters Kenya, IDEX Fellowship, and Village Capital.

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78+

Enterprises Funded

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$125mn. +

Invested

38mn.

women positively impacted till date