Publication database

This report presents findings and best practices from idh's innovating partners with regards to empowering farmers through service delivery, while generating sustainable returns to their businesses. Learn more about their models’ drivers of farmer resilience, cost reduction and financial sustainability.  And get inspired, by service models helping millions of smallholder farmers out of poverty, in often remote areas and developing economies around the globe.

Insurance supervisors in emerging markets have developed different approaches to foster markets for inclusive insurance. Several markets have undergone transformative changes as a result, but what has been the impact of these measures? The Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii) and the Facility have commissioned this study to assess the impact of microinsurance regulatory frameworks on developing inclusive insurance markets by way of a Regulatory Impact Assessment. 

This report highlights how traditional debt and equity financing structures often fail to adequately meet the needs of early-stage impact enterprises. It examines the pain points for both investors and entrepreneurs around traditional structures and the need for innovative instruments, provides examples of emerging and proven models, from revenue-based mezzanine debt to self-liquidating equity, and offers suggestions for concrete steps to advance the adoption of alternative structures to foster impact enterprises. 16 case studies from throughout Latin America aim to offer an overview of innovations both at the deal level and at the capital aggregation level, where holding companies and open-ended funds have proven to be potentially well suited for this space.

The study (i) reviews the definitions and concepts of social enterprises, (ii) outlines the landscape across 10 selected countries in Asia and Latin America, (iii) discusses challenges to scaling as faced by social enterprises, and (iv) presents suggestions for development banks to extend support to social enterprises through public and private sector investments. The study categorizes social enterprises and argues that the comparative advantage of development banks is to support selected social enterprises that are commercially bankable and have the base of the pyramid (BOP) at the core of their business operations. Development banks can support these enterprises—considered as the inclusive businesses of the future—through investing in impact funds and/or public sector loans.

According to the Startup India Action Plan, 2016, one of the major challenges is the failure of most startups during the initial five years due to lack of either funds or management skills. Therefore, developing a conducive environment becomes crucial to support start-ups during their initial years of operations. This handbook is an endeavour to provide insight on several models that could be explored to set up a fund to promote start-ups, contributions to which would qualify as CSR spend under the Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013.

This report provides case studies and lessons learned from seven Asian countries in five areas of innovative financing for development. Such innovative financing for development would benefit inclusive businesses as a new source of funding.

In Ecuadorian cities in the mid-1990s pharmacies were plentiful, but they catered to middle and high-income customers, neglecting the urban poor. Against this backdrop, Corporación Grupo Fybeca S.A. (GPF), a pharmaceutical retailer, saw an opportunity to complement its high-end pharmacy chain, Fybeca, with a down market chain so that customers could access quality medicines at economical prices. In 2000, the retail company launched SanaSana — its first pharmacy for low-income customers.

Salauno’s mission is to “eliminate needless blindness in Mexico” by providing affordable and accessible eye care services to patients of all income levels. In the first five years since its founding in 2011, the company has provided eye care to over 230,000 people and grown from one surgical centre in Mexico City into a network of ten mid-sized Diagnostic Centers with a staff of over 200, offering a range of services throughout the Mexico City Metropolitan Area and the broader Valley of Mexico.

This report sheds light on the topic of data being generated by impact investee organisations. It concludes that impact management is at a nascent stage in ist development, and that further support is needed to catalyse further development.

This report resents sustainable business opportunities in he Latin American and Caribbean region by 2030. It identifies attractive investment opportunities in 60 sustainable market ‘hotspots’ that could yield an economic prize worth more than US$1.2 trillion. The report shows how business, government, and civil society can helpt to make the region economically more dynamic, socially inclusive, and environmentally stable.