iCert provides a diverse certification solution to US-based diverse businesses that are controlled, managed and owned by diverse private equity firms. By targeting these diverse portfolio companies, the supplier diversity community can be expanded dramatically, expanding wealth creation opportunities for the diverse community throughout the United States .
~MarketWatch, Dow Jones & Company, Inc., June 7, 2022
Comprising over 700 private equity firms and thousands of diverse portfolio companies, the diverse private equity community now controls almost $500 billion of investment capital and has created and/or funded many ‘tier one’ and ‘tier two’ suppliers and has the capacity to create and/or fund many, many more.
In the past, organic growth drove building diverse suppliers. Today, however, mergers and acquisitions driven by the diverse private equity community will be the bedrock of building scalable diverse suppliers in the future. And without including diverse portfolio companies, the supplier diversity ecosystem will not reach its potential.
The iCert certification was developed to address this issue.
Within private equity firms, ownership structures can often be incredibly complex and traditionally challenging to understand true corporate control.
Diversity Capital, the company behind iCert, provides the requisite experience as we are led by private equity subject matter experts. We’ve advised various large, diverse private equity firms with supplier diversity strategy development and implementation as well as assisting with the certification of their portfolio companies.
Fortune 100, and Corporate America at large, can use the iCert platform to identify new and existing diverse suppliers to meet the objectives of their diverse supplier programs.
Diverse private equity firms can access certification services for their portfolio companies as well as a customized marketplace to access corporate supply chain revenue opportunities.
iCert provides diverse private equity firms and their portfolio companies access to streamlined diversity certification allowing them to access supplier diversity programs.
iCert confirms by rigorous due diligence that members of a diverse constituent community control and manage and have meaningful ownership in a private firm to qualify it as a Certified Diverse PE firm. Then we confirm that it controls and manages and holds a meaningful ownership interest in its portfolio companies through various investment funds or other special purposes investment vehicles to qualify the portfolio company as a Certified Diverse Business.
Pursuant to rigorous due diligence, iCert confirms that:
For more details on eligibility requirements, please contact us.
To affirm alignment with prospective corporate clients and their D&I goals and objectives, iCert Certificates are qualified based on a proprietary D&I scorecard designation that measures adherence to industry best practices in four areas: