The Promise of Impact investing in India

With an active social enterprise space and an engaged investment market, impact investing takes advantage of private sector efficiency and capital to achieve public sector goals. With this report, we aim to provide an analysis of the impact investment sector in India and its potential to achieve social good. The study brings together wide-ranging analyses undertaken between February 2018 and April 2019. Structured around four key tenets of impact investment market activity — market trends in India, sector-level analysis, innovative financing and measurements— it takes the reader through the major trends that have shaped the Indian impact investment environment and offers specific recommendations. A special focus is placed on the key social themes of health, education and agriculture.

Giving Credit Where Due:

A Case for Debt Financing in Indian Impact Enterprises

Debt financing has grown in India, but at only 25 percent of total investing, Indian impact enterprises struggle to find the working capital they need to grow and fulfil their potential. To better understand the challenges impact enterprises face in borrowing money, the India Impact Investors Council and The Bridgespan Group joined in this research project to chart the debt landscape, identify barriers to debt financing, and propose ways to make debt more accessible.

2020 in Retrospect: India Impact Investment Trends

India Impact Investors Council (IIC) released its annual report “2020 in Retrospect: India Impact Investment Trends” on 15th February 2021. The report reveals that Impact enterprises received ~$2.6BN in investment across 243 equity deals and saw 13 successful exits in the calendar year (CY) 2020. One clear conclusion from the report is that despite the global health pandemic and its accompanying effects on the business and economic environment, impact investors have pledged their support to solving critical social and environmental challenges through investments in scalable, tech-based, innovative impact enterprises.

The analysis is based on a bottom-up database of venture deals in social enterprises across all significant impact sectors.

Early-stage Climate-tech Startups in India: Investment Landscape Report 2021

Early-stage Climate-tech Startups in India: Investment landscape 2021 is an endeavour by the Impact Investors Council, Climate Collective and Areté Advisors to spotlight the activity in the Indian climate tech ecosystem over the last five years. The report serves three key objectives –

• • To deconstruct and adequately socialize the landscape of less understood solutions and innovative business models that characterize the current wave of climate-tech activity in the country.
• • To pave the way towards a unified taxonomy for the ecosystem that can help leap-frog space in response to the growing climate crisis.
• • To provide detailed recommendations and insights from industry players which can help climate-related start-up investments become mainstream.

Access IFI Report 2021: The Promise of Blended Finance for Financial Inclusion

Impact Investors Council (IIC) is pleased to share our contribution to the ACCESS Development Services Inclusive Finance India Report 2021 through a chapter exploring blended finance structures in the financial inclusion space. The write-up delineates how innovative asset-based, liability-based and pay-for-success structures (such as impact bonds) can strengthen NBFC balance sheets and solve pressing challenges in critical sectors where a lack of credit is hampering India’s economic growth.

State of Impact NBFCs in India

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Exploring the “Missing-Link”: The India Opportunity for Growth Stage Impact Funds

India’s equity impact investing market is poised for sustained growth. As the nation looks to spend roughly ~$170 Bn annually to finance Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, the limited public sector resources mean that impact capital providers will have to play a greater role in plugging this funding gap.

Traditionally, funding into early-stage impact enterprises in India has been led by impact investors, while later-stage funding comes from commercial investors. This model has served us well so far. Still, a “missing-link” exists in the market: the absence of a growth stage India-focused impact funds can finance the transition of impact enterprises beyond early venture funding.

India Impact Investing Handbook

The all-in-one handbook attempts to provide a bird’s-eye perspective of the investment opportunity across multiple dimensions of the impact investing market in India (such as Equity, Debt, Gender-lens, Climate-tech, Blended Finance etc.) through a combination of grounds-up IIC database analysis and insights from key industry practitioners.