International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) have traditionally played a crucial role in addressing global challenges, providing humanitarian aid and fostering sustainable development. By leveraging their extensive networks, local knowledge and deep-rooted trust within communities, they have delivered critical services and implemented development projects in the world’s most underserved areas. Some of the largest INGOs exemplify this reach: in 2022 alone, Oxfam impacted 15.6 million people, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement supported 160.7 million globally and CARE International reached 170 million, illustrating the scale at which they mobilize resources and deliver transformative outcomes. Their mandates and effective use of resources have allowed them to achieve investor additionality — generating outcomes that would not have occurred without their intervention. They have pursued this additional impact through both financial additionality, such as providing grants or running programs with a catalytic mindset, and non-financial additionality, including offering technical assistance.

As readers engage with this report, it is important to consider three contextual factors: 1) The sample size may not adequately capture the wide range of viewpoints of all INGOs involved in impact investing, even though it serves as a representative sample of those operating in Europe; 2) The available literature on INGOs engaging in impact investing is currently limited, which may restrict the depth of our analysis; 3) The core constituency of INGOs we consulted understands additionality in a way that aligns closely with our definition11 and considers themselves as pursuers of additionality through their activities, both in financial and non-financial ways. While we acknowledge that this concept may be relatively unfamiliar to some INGOs that are newly exploring the impact investing space, we will consistently employ this definition throughout the paper to maintain clarity and coherence in our analysis.

The key role of guarantees is to crowd in investors and open new markets. This is achieved by:

• solving collateral deficiency challenges;
• closing the gap between perceived and actual risk; and
• absorbing portions of risk so that lenders can enter new markets with lower risk

However, guarantees are not a silver bullet to bypass credit processes e.g., business documentation (registration, business plans, financials, etc), nor do they serve as an exemption to finance unbankable deals. Measuring the effectiveness of guarantees is not standardized and the context of the guarantee (e.g., sector, region, lender) must be considered when comparing metrics such as utilization, catalyzed capital, or additionality. While the ultimate aim of guarantees is to be made redundant, this goal is unlikely to be met in the short term for agriculture as a sector and in SSA given the sector’s profile i.e., mainly fueled by smallholder farmers who are deemed risky because of informality, largely non-commercial farm models and the sector’s vulnerabilities resulting from climate risk. There are several opportunities for donors to support lending to agriculture across the value chain to build the market using an ecosystem approach to increase agri-lending.

Exploring the experiences of women entrepreneurs in low and middle income countries in 2024

Despite facing structural and individual barriers to business growth, women in low and middle income countries (LMICs) continue to carve out their own economic opportunities. Many are running businesses, often leveraging new technologies to expand their reach. Women are among the owners of 47% of businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean, 44% in East Asia and the Pacific, and 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa. In emerging economies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute 40% of the gross domestic product (GDP), underscoring their vital role in economic development. However, women entrepreneurs face systematic disadvantages in accessing capital, growing business networks, and fully participating in the digital economy.

In recent years, women entrepreneurs have increasingly embraced digital technologies, with social media emerging as a powerful tool for expanding their businesses, building customer relationships, and boosting visibility. Beyond social media, many are adopting e-commerce, AI-driven business tools, and online financial services. Yet significant challenges remain, including insufficient resources, limited technical skills, risks of gender-based harassment, privacy concerns, and digital exclusion. These obstacles restrict women’s ability to fully capitalize on the benefits of technologies that could support their business growth.

This report provides fresh insights from an online survey of 2,870 women entrepreneurs from 96 LMICs, highlighting the key trends, challenges, and urgent actions required to create a more inclusive, secure, and healthy business environment for women-led enterprises. This year’s survey is an in-depth examination of key business technology issues explored in last year’s report, spotlighting how digital finance and social media are reshaping business for women.

This country report explores the evolving landscape of social procurement in Malaysia, focusing on how impact-driven businesses, including social enterprises, engage with corporate clients and the challenges they face in supplying their products and services. Social procurement, which leverages purchasing power to generate both social and environmental benefits alongside economic value, has gained increasing attention globally in recent years. Recognizing the need for greater market understanding, the Malaysia Impact Alliance (MYImpact) and Yunus Social Business (YSB) initiated this project to provide visibility for impact-driven businesses seeking corporate buyers and to analyze their needs in supplying to corporations.

The key findings of this study highlight that most impact-driven businesses in Malaysia operate on a small scale, facing significant barriers in accessing financing and meeting the operational standards required by corporate buyers. Limited resources, capacity constraints, and lack of long-term visibility and commitment from corporate clients often hinder their ability to secure sustainable corporate partnerships. Finally, the report suggests recommendations to enhance social procurement in Malaysia. These include conducting market research and matchmaking events to connect impact-driven businesses with corporate buyers, facilitating stronger B2B partnerships, a capacity-building program to support impact-driven businesses in enhancing their B2B sales capabilities by providing expert insights and peer advice on positioning themselves as preferred suppliers and engaging effectively with corporate clients.

If there is one sector in India that has witnessed visible, drastic change in the 21st century, it has to be that of sports. Consider this- at the turn of the century, India was considered as a one-sport nation, namely, a cricketing nation. Even in cricket, India was for most part, an “alsoran”. If you were to read any media coverage of India’s sports sector in the 90s and the early 2000s, you would notice an oft-repeated lament that Cricket in India grabbed all the eyeballs and investments, and all other sports were in a state of poverty. While much of the lament was true then, the narrative has been changing slowly, yet progressively over the last 25 years.

This White Paper explores how such multi-stakeholder collaboration, matching and funding can happen. In answering the “how”, we have discussed various blended finance approaches case studies derived from their deployment in other social sectors, which could be adapted and deployed for raising funding within the sporting ecosystem, be it for building sporting infrastructure or for developing community sport or for achieving Olympic/Paralympic glory. Within the Indian context, the advent of the Social Stock Exchange provides for yet another exciting social financing mechanism to be explored in the days ahead. We also provide two recent example of Social Stock Exchange listings for readers to assess this platform’s potential.

The Pakistan Startup Ecosystem Report 2024 offers a deep dive into the journey of Pakistan’s entrepreneurial landscape, spotlighting the opportunities, challenges, and transformations that shape it. From a historic funding boom to today’s recalibrated focus on sustainability and innovation, the report provides key insights into the ecosystem’s evolution.

Discover how Pakistan’s startups are navigating economic headwinds while leveraging their immense potential, fueled by a young population, growing digital adoption, and promising infrastructure.

This guide aims to help Indian researchers and inventors turn their ideas into reality. It outlines the tough but exciting process of bringing new ideas to market through the creation of a new company. It is particularly tailored towards inventors working in research institutions, such as universities and public research laboratories, but may also benefit a range of other individuals who wish to build new ventures.

The document is based in part on surveys and interviews with Indian academic entrepreneurs and investors.The structure follows the sequence that is typically required for a spinout: deciding if an idea has potential; planning the business; forming the business; and then scaling it. However, since every spinout is different, some parts will likely be more relevant to you than others. Inevitably, the guide can only provide a high-level overview, and so links to further resources are provided in the appendix and in footnotes.

In 2024, ANDE East and Southeast Asia continued to drive meaningful impact across the region, fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and investment in small and growing businesses. This year’s highlights included landmark events and insightful publications that brought together key stakeholders to shape the future of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Asia-Pacific. Beyond events and research, our members remain at the heart of ANDE’s work. Their voices throughout this report underscore the value of ANDE’s ecosystem in driving systemic change, strengthening regional entrepreneurship, and unlocking new opportunities for sustainable growth.

In Cambodia, women entrepreneurs encounter complex barriers when accessing finance, particularly those arising from their intersectional identities. A recent study by Gender and Development for Cambodia and SHE powered by iDE delves into how factors such as age, ability status, religion, family composition, and sexual orientation, can intersect with gender and create unique challenges for women entrepreneurs. The research aims to better understand how these intersecting factors limit access to financial products, services, and investments, thus hindering women’s entrepreneurial growth. Challenges cited in the interviews include:

• Marital status: “They [the bank] said if I am a widow, my mother can join me in accessing the loan, but I don’t want her to get involved. I want to earn money myself and pay it off myself.”
• Disability: “The financial institute did not give me the amount I requested because they think due to my disability, my ability to pay back is limited”
• Age: “I am old and have a disability. When they see me, they pretend I am invisible and turn their head away, pretending they don’t see me.”
• Sexual orientation: “I was thinking of having a joint property [with my spouse] as a collateral, but we could not verify it at the bank since there was no official legal document we can do to verify that we are a married couple and own the property together.”
• Religion: “If the financial institutions provide me a package for my business investment without an interest rate, I would take it. But if it comes with an interest rate, it is against the Muslim rule.”

In her 2019 budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced the Social Stock Exchange initiative, which has since attracted considerable attention in the development sphere. Designed to foster inclusivity and adaptability within capital markets, India launched its Social Stock Exchange, the fourth functioning exchange in the world.

The Social Stock Exchange challenges the issue of inconsistent funding and transparency, by connecting Not-for-Profit Organisations (NPOs) with socially conscious investors through various financial instruments. The exchange serves as a centralised hub for channelling resources to social enterprises and fostering impactful development initiatives. This is facilitated by deploying consistent funding frameworks, diversifying funding sources, and enhancing impact measurement, disclosure, and reporting practices. Through promoting transparency, the exchange cultivates a disclosure-driven ecosystem, guiding stakeholders towards mutual progress. Registering and listing on this exchange can be an intimidating process.

This toolkit aims to equip NPOs with the essential knowledge and resources to navigate the SSE framework through a step-by-step approach. Leveraging insights from Unnati Foundation, the first NPO to get listed on the SSE platform, we segment the NPO’s journey from registration to successful listing into four phases. Each phase aids in understanding compliance requirements, forging partnerships, and embracing best practices