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The Missing Asset Class: How Aggregated MSMEs Could Unlock the Next Wave of Impact Investing Deal Flow
Despite years of emphasizing the need to reach underserved businesses, the impact investing sector is increasingly focusing on lower-risk opportunities. According to Adanna Chukwuma at CARE, mature companies have drawn the largest increases in impact assets over the past six years, while funding to seed-stage enterprises has contracted — despite multiple financial instruments designed to serve the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in this segment. As she explains, this trend excludes a vast band of businesses with real revenue, real demand and real growth potential: aggregated MSMEs, i.e., individual enterprises that have joined together to contract and borrow as one. She explores the investment opportunity in these MSMEs, and calls for the creation of a new asset class around them, explaining how this could unlock the flow of impact capital to enterprises that remain systemically overlooked.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
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India’s Software firm Rezolv Raises $12.5 Million Series A Led by Norwest
Rezolv sells software to banks and non-banking financial companies to manage debt collection, from early reminders through legal recovery.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Apple Pay Launches in the Philippines
"An easier, safer, and more secure way to pay using iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac is now available."
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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The Smallholder-Supermarket Disconnect: Addressing the Missing Links that Separate East African Farmers from Formal Retail Markets
Smallholder farmers are the backbone of East African agriculture, accounting for approximately 75% of production in several countries. At the same time, formal food retail is expanding across the region. Yet as Daniel Njiwa at AGRA and Kris Ansin and Audrey Tsoi at TechnoServe explain, despite this alignment, the formal retail market remains inaccessible to many smallholder farmers, as a range of barriers prevent them from supplying these vendors. They share learnings from a pilot program that highlighted some of these constraints, and explore how supermarkets can work through aggregators that consolidate and coordinate supply from multiple farmers to source smallholder produce at scale.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Indian E-Bike Rental Startup Yulu Raises $93 Million to Help Fund Expansion
Electric mobility firms including Yulu have benefited from fast growth in India's quick commerce and e-commerce sectors, as delivery workers increasingly shift to battery-powered vehicles that cost less to run and reduce exposure to fuel price swings.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Mini-grids May Not Be the Answer: Why Shifts in Technology and Funding Have Changed the Energy Access Outlook in Africa
There is intense pressure to reach universal energy access by 2030, which requires a further 666 million people to be electrified, most of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. And according to Stewart Hicks at Bamboo Capital Partners, mini-grids are often viewed as a key part of the solution, leading to growing calls for more private sector investment in this technology. But he argues that this focus on mini-grids may be distracting from faster, more cost-effective approaches. He explains why mini-grids — despite being a good solution in some areas — have several under-reported constraints, and explores some emerging alternative electrification models that may present a more realistic path toward greater energy access in Africa.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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Beanstalk AgTech Announces the Launch of Monsoon Ventures to Accelerate Agtech Commercialisation in Southeast Asia
The studio will invest capital, recruit complementary commercial expertise, map value chain pathways, and help ventures attract the right investors or strategic partnerships with regional players.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Nigeria’s Federal Government Targets One Million MSMEs, 50,000 Jobs With Renewable Energy Programme
". . . the minister said the programme would deploy renewable energy solutions to one million businesses, reduce production costs for MSMEs, expand financial inclusion and promote inclusive economic growth."
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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