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Oryx Impact
Oryx Impact was established in 2019 in Barcelona by founding partners Teresa Guardans and Sebastian Waldburg, both veterans of European finance and impact...
Oryx Impact
Oryx Impact was established in 2019 in Barcelona by founding partners Teresa Guardans and Sebastian Waldburg, both veterans of European finance and impact investing. Guardans' career spans investment banking and wealth management at firms including UBS and Pictet, while Waldburg brings more than 25 years of energy and private equity experience in emerging markets. The firm was built to answer a specific structural gap — scarce capital flows into early-stage and women-led fund managers across Africa. Oryx deploys capital through primary fund commitments, co-investments, and secondaries across private equity, venture capital, and private debt. The firm's geographic mandate covers Sub-Saharan Africa, with West and Southern Africa as anchor points from offices in Lagos and Pretoria. Its screening process includes 11 explicit criteria, among them a $30 million minimum fund size, an exclusive or segregated Africa mandate, and exclusion of funds with over 50% single-country exposure. The firm does not disclose specific portfolio fund names or co-investment targets, but its strategy documents confirm a focus on SMEs generating essential goods and services, with impact measurement tracked across employment growth, greenhouse-gas emissions avoided, and percentage of female leadership. The firm runs an eight-person team based across three cities: Barcelona, Lagos, and Pretoria. Partner and CIO Eva Abel, formerly of the European Investment Fund, leads investment activity. A dedicated Technical Assistance facility supports emerging managers in professionalizing ESG and impact-measurement practices. In 2023, Oryx was named an Emerging Impact Manager in the ImpactAssets 50 list, and in early 2024 it joined the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance. Advisory board members include former sovereign-wealth-fund executives and central-bank governors, extending the firm's institutional reach. What distinguishes Oryx structurally is not its fund-of-funds wrapper but its operational bet on manager origination: it has screened over 360 Africa-focused funds and explicitly prioritizes first-time and women-led teams, then adds a technical-assistance layer to professionalize those managers before committing capital. This approach pushes the firm deeper into the manager-development value chain than most emerging-market fund-of-funds vehicles, whose sourcing typically stops at track-record validation.
General information
Firm type
Private Equity
Year founded
2019
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
Europe
Country
Spain
City
Barcelona
Corporate office
Barcelona, Spain
Additional offices
Lagos, Nigeria · Pretoria, South Africa
Principals
Teresa Guardans
Founding Partner
Sebastian Waldburg
Founding Partner
Eva Abel
Partner, CIO
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at Oryx Impact?
Eva Abel serves as Partner and CIO, leading investment activity. Founding partners Teresa Guardans and Sebastian Waldburg oversee the firm's strategic direction. Abel brought 14 years of investment experience from the European Investment Fund, Giza Polish Ventures, and Nigerian investment banking.
How does Oryx Impact source its fund investments?
Oryx conducts primary due diligence on Africa-focused managers. The firm has met with and analyzed over 360 funds. Its screening emphasizes on-the-ground presence, impact intentionality, and a preference for women-led or emerging management teams, making its pipeline substantially self-generated.
Does Oryx Impact only invest in funds, or does it make direct deals?
Oryx operates primarily as a fund of funds, allocating to private equity, venture capital, and private debt vehicles. Its strategy also permits co-investments into companies alongside the funds it backs, giving it a hybrid capital-deployment path when opportunities align.
What investment stages and asset classes does Oryx Impact target?
The firm covers early-stage, growth, and expansion-stage companies through underlying fund managers. Its asset-class mix includes venture capital, growth equity, mezzanine, and secondaries. It also considers venture-debt strategies, provided the manager meets its impact and governance criteria.
Which sectors or activities does Oryx Impact explicitly exclude?
Investee funds must exclude activities on the IFC Exclusion List, the Harmonized EDFI Exclusion List, and the EDFI Fossil Fuel Exclusion List. Oryx also prohibits investments in alcoholic beverages, including wine and beer, and requires underlying managers to avoid country-concentrated portfolios exceeding 50% exposure.
How is Oryx Impact's technical-assistance facility structured?
The firm provides a Technical Assistance facility designed to help emerging fund managers professionalize ESG and Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) practices. The goal is to reduce ESG risk and build stable, Africa-based impact-investing teams before or alongside capital commitments.
What is Oryx Impact’s gender-lens investment approach?
Oryx applies a gender lens at both the SME and fund-manager levels. It proactively seeks women-led management teams, operating on evidence that those teams are more likely to invest in female-led businesses. The firm tracks workforce and leadership gender percentages and uses 2X Challenge-compliant indicators.
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