India has a wide but unorganised value chain for post-consumer domestic (PCD) waste. Formalised sorting hubs or Textile Recovery Facilities (TRFs) primarily dealing with PCD waste, are at a nascent stage, trying to find their feet within the market by optimising processes at both the demand and supply sides. These TRFs are sorting PCD waste through manual methods. However, despite the waste valorisation potential of these sorting hubs, their returns are limited in certain cases as they are unable to provide good quality waste feedstock and assurance of the material composition to high-grade fibre-to-fibre mechanical recyclers. This gap provides a potential area for the deployment of sorting technologies. 

About 48% of the Post-consumer Domestic Waste (PCD) has the potential to be valorised via formalised sorting hubs. Out of this, 35% of the waste can have better utilisation by adopting semiautomated & automated technologies, leading to a revenue increase of 10%. At an industry level, this translates to 1,380 kilo tonnes of waste and INR 388 Cr (going up to INR 1,348 crores in some cases) of additional revenue in one year. However, an enabling environment needs to be created to make these technologies economically viable for a sorting hub.

The business case presented in this report assesses commercial viability for both semi-automated and automated technologies and validates the hypothesis under five different scenarios. Thus, it demonstrates the infrastructure and investment requirements to valorise the post-consumer textile waste, serving as a framework to enable well-informed decision-making for sorting hubs to implement sorting technologies. 

The 6th edition of the Global Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Report by the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) focuses on the transformative role of youth and women entrepreneurship in enhancing supply chains and driving sustainable development. Aligned with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the report highlights the innovative spirit and resilience of young and women entrepreneurs in fostering inclusive growth and equitable opportunities. It emphasizes the concept of humane entrepreneurship, which goes beyond profit to prioritize empathy, ethical practices, and social impact. By exploring inspiring stories, research findings, and practical insights, the report calls for a people-centric approach that nurtures enterprises and champions sustainable practices. It aims to inspire entrepreneurs, policymakers, and stakeholders to support MSMEs in creating a more inclusive and sustainable future, where these enterprises can thrive and drive positive social and economic change.

The Impact Investors Council (IIC) aims to drive private capital towards market-based models for social impact in India. This report, "Year in Retrospect: India Impact Investing Trends," provides insights into 2023's investment landscape across key sectors such as agriculture, climate tech, healthcare, education, financial inclusion, and technology for development. In 2023, equity investments in Indian impact enterprises totaled $2.90 billion, down from $6 billion in 2022, reflecting a global venture capital slowdown rather than India's potential as an impact investment destination. With over 1.4 billion people, there is vast scope for innovative solutions in underserved sectors, especially with rising digital penetration in rural areas. This report highlights the opportunities for scaling impactful solutions that address critical development challenges in India and aims to guide asset owners, managers, and policymakers in understanding and engaging with India's impact investing market.

"We make a comparison of microfinance banks (MBs) and commercial banks (CBs) in terms of efficiency, business orientation, stability, and asset quality by analyzing a large sample of banks from 60 countries around the world. Our findings indicate that microfinance banks have higher intermediation, non-interest income, wholesale funding and liquidity, but lower efficiency and asset quality. These significant variations are influenced by smaller microfinance banks and are driven mostly to African and Latin American microfinance banks."

"The diversity-led organizations, that are more often addressing equity-deserving communities, received philanthropic support three times less often, and support from less funders than the conventional-led organizations. These results demonstrate that environmental philanthropy in Canada favors a large set of established organizations and perpetuates a landscape of exclusion for diversity-led organizations working on the low-carbon energy transition. By perpetuating disparities through funding, philanthropy is reinforcing inequities among marginalized communities. This in turn is setting back the progress of equity in low-carbon energy transitions in Canada."

"The goal of this report is to inspire more philanthropists to act. The report provides tools, case studies, and encouragement to help existing and potential climate philanthropists overcome barriers to action."

"This report provides investors with insights on how impact performance analytics can unlock deeper understanding of investors’ actions and the real-world impact of their capital. This brief explores the positive effects of non-financial support on improving the impact of investee companies on the clients they serve in the sustainable agriculture sector. Findings highlight the role that non-financial support from investors can play in strengthening the impact performance of investments, improving sustainable agricultural practices and increasing the number of farmers served by their investments each year."

"Dismantling and shifting power structures is key for achieving meaningful social impact. For far too long, funders have had significant control over social impact organizations: what they focus on, how they allocate resources, and how they measure their own success. This control contributes to ongoing inequity and impedes progress. This report seeks to contribute to those solutions by beginning to address two essential questions: Who has power to define success?, and, Who should have power to define success? Guided by this frame of reference, we conducted a review of existing literature, a series of 22 interviews, and a survey of 409 nonprofit leaders, social innovators, and philanthropic funders to understand how philanthropy and social innovators measure success. We focused on the challenges faced specifically by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) leaders. Across these three methods, we sought to understand four key questions: 1. Who has power to define vision, mission, and metrics? 2. What metrics are collected and how are they used? 3. What effect do metrics have on BIPOC leaders? 4. How can we create more equitable funding streams?"

"The report delves into micro and small women entrepreneurs’ credit journey and explores demand and supply-side factors. The study shares insights on credit requirements, experiences, challenges, and credit success determinants for individual and collective women-led enterprises. This report also identifies five key personas of female borrowers. It shares the supply-side experiences of bankers and other organizations who directly or indirectly lend to women entrepreneurs. It shares some novel methods and good practices supply-side stakeholders implement to mitigate and distribute credit risk. Ultimately, it provides key recommendations to enhance access to credit for women entrepreneurs."

"The report highlights the struggle of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in measuring and communicating their contributions to climate adaptation and resilience, owing to complexity, cost, and the inadequacy of existing metrics. This leads to a gap in understanding the impact of their efforts. The study aims to identify solutions and principles to better measure climate resilience and adaptation in MSMEs, guided by the Climate Capital Network's Metrics and Measurement Working Group. It aims to identify the challenges faced by MSMEs in measuring climate adaptation and resilience, assessing the relevance of metrics for investors, and outlining comprehensive principles to gauge these aspects effectively. It stresses the complexity and multifaceted nature of climate resilience and adaptation. They highlight the discrepancy and complexity among existing indicator frameworks, hindering their usability and comparability. MSMEs face hurdles in accessing and utilizing these metrics due to cost, complexity, and limited visibility compared to larger enterprises. The study identifies ten patterns crucial for measuring climate resilience and adaptation, emphasizing social impact, environmental conditions, financial considerations, risk management, and governance mechanisms. Finally, it emphasizes the need for flexible, comprehensive, and accessible metrics to facilitate investor understanding and encourage private sector investment in climate adaptation and resilience solutions. There's a call for clearer, standardized, and practical metrics supported by case studies to guide MSMEs in demonstrating their impact effectively to potential investors. This comprehensive approach aims to bridge the gap between the desire for climate resilience investments and the challenge of measuring their impact."