Gazelle Finance was an early - stage investor in Degusto, the first - ever fast - casual restaurant chain in Tbilisi, Georgia. With nine locations in Tbilisi, Degusto is now 250 employees strong. In the early days of Degusto back in 2016, it was just the two founders, Giorgi Mushkudiani and Alexander Norakidze, who had a vision to fulfill a market niche that had not yet been tapped in the country of Georgia in the fast - casual food space. It came together with Degusto, which Mushkudiani and Norakidze opened in 2016 in Tbilisi. At Degusto, the emphasis is on the healthy, consistent, high - quality lunches at affordable prices. Degusto also leverages its central kitchen to provide business - to - business catering solutions for large corporates. 

Prior to co - founding Degusto, Mushkudiani and Norakidze managed to save a supermarket chain from financial collapse. Mushkudiani and Norakidze launched Degusto with their own money. In 2016, the duo managed to convince a local Georgian equity investor to invest in Degusto, so they could open four additional outlets. Without a track record or substantial collateral, it was hard for them to find other creditors or investors for the next phase of their expansions. "We approached three or four banks, but were turned down every time", explains Norakidze. 

In 2017, Gazelle Finance’s investment fund, Gazelle Fund, backed by leading development finance institutions, including FMO, DGGF, and OPIC, and a local sovereign investment fund, Partnership Fund, stepped in. “The only collateral Gazelle demanded was our own shares in the company”, Mushkudiani recalls. “They [Gazelle Finance] believed in our concept and took the risk.” With a loan from Gazelle Mushkudiani and Norakidze opened five additional outlets, upgraded their central kitchen and obtained an ISO certification. “We are a real gazelle”, says Mushkudiani. “We lack collateral, but we doubled our sales every year, from one million dollars in 2016 to four million dollars in 2018.”  In the meantime, Gazelle has taken over the shares in Degusto from the Georgian investor. “Gazelle is flexible, everything can be negotiated with them” says Mushkudiani.

Gazelle Finance, in addition to Gazelle Fund, manages a separate business development services facility that provides highly targeted, business performance enhancement interventions to its portfolio companies to further accelerate growth. The strategy behind this approach is to adapt the traditional value-add venture capital and private equity value model to the SME mezzanine financing space. This allows Gazelle Finance to provide the combination of value-add services and growth capital to its portfolio companies at scale. The primary product deployed through this business development services facility is the zero-interest loan. The repayment obligation for the zero-interest loan ensures that there is truly buy-in from the beneficiary.

Degusto underscores the importance of leveraging the business development services facility to accelerate growth. Gazelle Finance executed four discrete interventions that were critical determinants in enabling Degusto to maintain its classic gazelle growth trajectory. The first performance enhancement intervention was the implementation of an ERP system to improve inventory cost accounting management controls and track performance of food items sales at the individual outlet level, inclusive of seasonal and other exogenous factors. The second performance enhancement intervention was a branding make-over that resulted in broadening recognition of the Degusto brand throughout the country of Georgia.  The third performance enhancement intervention, the company’s first third party tax audit, has improved financial management controls and transparency as the company evolves to become a more mature company with heavier reporting obligations. The fourth performance enhancement intervention coincides with Gazelle Finance’s execution of its equity investment: the introduction of a mentor board member to improve the corporate governance capacity of Degusto.

Young entrepreneurs like Mushkudiani and Norakidze are the key drivers for job creation, innovation and economic growth in Georgia.  Degusto is a great example of how Gazelle Finance achieves such development impact through the rapid scaling and growth of its portfolio companies. “We put the entrepreneur first, to align interests and form a strong partnership that rewards both parties for their efforts,” says Gazelle’s CEO Jeffrey Liebert. Gazelle Finance’s partnership approach was critical in the company’s first high growth phase of development. When it was determined that there was an incentive alignment problem with the passive equity investor, Gazelle Finance provided additional capital to acquire these shares to enable the company to continue on  this high growth, job creation trajectory.

Although Gazelle Finance is primarily looking for commercial returns for its investors, the company also maintains a social impact investment goal of generating 33 new jobs per investment transaction. Over the life of the Gazelle Fund it is anticipated that over 3,000 new jobs will be created in the South Caucasus region and the majority are for women.  Employment generation is just one of many of the development impact metrics that Gazelle Finance tracks using its proprietary monitoring and evaluation system.

In 2015. Otar Nachkebia and Irakli Chavleshvili came up with and idea for a food product that they wanted to launch in the country of Georgia. Nachkebia and Chavleshvili had a vision for their foor product line which included producing high quality, natural and organice ingredients and promoting endemic varietals. Until the Soviet era, Georgia was one of the most important centers for wheat domestication, but the Soviet system of central planning nealry wiped out this crop. 

Nachkebia and Chavleshvili came up with their food product idea at a time when the market was not incentivizing farmers to plan endemic wheat varietals. Recognizing that a new source of demand for endemic wheat varietals had to shot up, the Gemovani entrepreneurs opened a small bakery under the brand named "Mzetamze", which translated to "The Sun of Suns" in English. The bakery's initial success spurred expansion beyond retail sales into seed distribution and flour milling, which involved building off - take partnerships with local farmers and relationships for selling wholesale. Continued growth led to the investment opportunity with Gazelle Finance. In July 2018, Nachkebia and Chavleshvili received $370,000 investment capital (including debt and equity) from Gazelle Finance to rapidly scale their business, Nachkebia and Chavleshvli used the funding to new ovens and other baking equipment, upgrade an industrial - scale baking facility and invest in delivery vehicles. They directed part of the investment to working capital. 

Revenue from the company continued to accelerate, growth from $10,000 to $40,000 per month. From July 2018 to date, the company grew their annual revenue by 300%, leading to the creation of 30 new jobs. Through its blended financing vehicle, Gazelle Finance also awarded $4,000 in grant support for developing and implementing HAACP food safety management systems. This HAACP certification helps ensure the company's compliance with the highest level of food handling standards. The results emerging from this impact investing example indicate the importance of import substitution. Moreover, this is just the beginning for these ambitious entrepreneurs, who are positioning themselves to be the next Burt's Bees Wax, Tom's of Maine, or Neiman Ranch of the South Caucasus. 

Manana Gvirjishvili is a classic story of an entrepreneur in post-Soviet Georgia.Manana, a former teacher of Georgian language and literature for 18 years, had been a state employee with no entrepreneurial background whatsoever, suddenly was faced with an incredible, but risky opportunity, in a very chaotic time - to become an entrepreneur owning and managing a private school with a 900 plus enrollment capacity [in the middle of an economic downturn].Up until 2011 year Manana had been the principal of K-12 private school “Shvinda” in the Digomi region on the outskirts of Tbilisi.

At this time the school was grossly underfunded by the state and the old facility was in a state of utter disrepair.The dilemma for the government at the time was that the school was the primary K-12 education service provider and community center serving this fast-growing, working class neighborhood, yet it lacked the resources and know-how to provide proper educational services to the children in this community.

In 2011 year the state government agreed to privatize the school if Manana would commit to  three conditions: provide quality education on a subsidized basis to a percentage of the local community and the remainder would pay tuition on private school basis, introduce a modern western-styled education curriculum, and would invest significant capital to modernize the facilities to meet international standards for a building serving as an education and community center.The first step Manana took was to engage her son, who had been working in Austria, to develop a relationship with the education ministry that would help her to develop the European equivalent curriculum. In addition, she took out the first loan in her life to do a basic remodel of the facilities just to get it to a functioning level. However, this capital was insufficient to meet the minimum standards of competitive western-styled K-12 private school and would not be able to increase enrollment and tuition to meet the debt service requirements of the loan.This is where Gazelle Finance enters the picture.  Manana is an exceptional and highly respected educator with a strong vision for her school.The school’s facility assets had great potential for further capital investment that would lead to doubling or tripling enrollment from the current levels. The location of the school in the Digomi region is ideal for creating a market leading private school with a western-style curriculum in what was likely to be a future middle-class neighborhood.Gazelle Finance stepped-in with a minority equity investment that provided the necessary capital to bring the school’s facility up to an international standard and sufficient working capital to attract teacher and administrator talent. In addition, through its ESG and business development services teams, Gazelle Finance completed a [first, health, safety] evaluation, and provided USD 4,000 grant to do fire and safety audit. In addition, utilizing Gazelle Finance’s business development services facility and through facilitation by the investment team at Gazelle Finance, Manana will attend a training with a potential strategic partner in the region with the hopes that further cooperation between these two organizations will lead to further innovation for this emerging market leading private school.