This initiative reflects Heifer International's ongoing dedication to developing impactful solutions for Nepal's smallholder farmers and women-led agri-enterprises. The study's primary objective was to assess and strengthen the impact of the investment landscape in Nepal, fostering increased financial support and growth opportunities for these vital sectors.

The report highlights several critical insights into the current status of impact investment in Nepal. First, it underscores the challenges that need to be addressed to attract potential and interested impact investors to the region. These challenges include regulatory hurdles, a lack of investor confidence, and limited access to reliable market data. Second, the study identifies strategies to unlock more capital for impact-oriented initiatives. These strategies encompass enhancing financial and investment literacy, improving transparency and governance within agribusinesses and cooperatives, and fostering partnerships between the public and private sectors to create a more conducive investment environment. Furthermore, consulted financial institutions shared several critical challenges hindering Nepal’s agriculture sector investment. The commodity value chains lack clear and distinct opportunities for targeted interventions. There is a significant shortage of bankable projects, as most farmers and agribusinesses—aside from a few large companies—struggle to develop compelling, investment-ready proposals. Existing policies need urgent reform to foster greater private sector participation and unlock the sector's full potential. 

The study aims to explore women entrepreneurs' access to credit from SACCOs in Nepal. It focuses on women entrepreneurs engaged in diverse sectors, including trade and services, manufacturing, and agriculture. The study seeks to highlight the gender-based challenges women face when applying for business loans from financial institutions. Specifically, the study addresses the following questions in the context of women-led micro-enterprises in Nepal: 1) Do small business women have access to adequate finance from SACCOs? 2) Do women face barriers attributed to gender norms when accessing credit from financial institutions? 3) What are the supply side constraints (of SACCOs) in providing credit to small business women? Through exploring these questions, the study aims to contribute valuable insights to the ongoing discourse on gender-lens investment practices and their potential to create a more inclusive and sustainable entrepreneurial environment for small and growing businesses (SGBs) owned by women in Nepal.

"This document presents ENERGIA’s four-year journey to create and upscale womencentric energy enterprises that sell safe, reliable and affordable energy solutions to low-income consumers in underserved areas. ENERGIA works with partner organizations in seven countries in an effort to develop and test new, disruptive business models and approaches that promote women as energy entrepreneurs. This document is a self-reflection, undertaken collectively by the WEE programme coordinator, the partner organizations and the ENERGIA International Secretariat. As a learning document, it seeks to analyse the various strategies with which we have worked in different contexts. It draws out common features of the most promising ones, as well as lessons from efforts that did not go so well, or even failed completely. Since documentation on women’s energy entrepreneurship is only beginning to emerge, wherever relevant, we have crosschecked our lessons with those from women’s entrepreneurship in other sectors."