Publication database

Over the past decade, a new wave of pioneer healthcare initiatives has emerged that aims to improve the quality of care and access to healthcare of vulnerable populations in LMICs by building commercially viable and scalable enterprises. These pioneers are developing novel delivery models – inclusive clinics and hospitals, pharmacy-based, community-based, and risk-prevention models – and are innovating to solve patient pain points by making use of mobile and digital technologies, offering financing and insurance solutions, and improving access to preventative and primary care. This report reviews the preliminary findings of a study performed by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, together with Hystra – a consultancy specialized in inclusive business solutions – to learn from pioneer organizations what underlies their early successes and what is limiting them from reaching further scale or impact. It reviews the landscape of global inclusive initiatives and identifies innovations that can strengthen the impact of businesses.

This report – supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – relies on case studies drawn from the health sector to provide a better understanding of female sales forces. When are women direct sales forces be best-placed to reach low-income (women) consumers and why? How much income can women sales agents truly hope to make from these models?  What practical requirements and best practices can help make these models successful?

‘Two Hands to Heal’ explores how healthcare inclusive businesses have collaborated with governments to respond to the global COVID-19 crisis and beyond. The report discusses challenges when collaborating with governments, identifies lessons learned from health inclusive businesses and offers recommendations to governments and donors on how to foster and improve collaboration.

The factsheet shortly explains the role of IFC in financing inclusive business endeavours. Describing untapped business opportunities among low-income communities, the article emphasizes the win-win of inclusive business models for economic growth and human development.

This report covers SPRING Acccelerator's learning so that other accelerators, programmes, donors and ecosystem-builders can build on their experience to better support businesses to innovate for impact. SPRING broke up their learning into four sub-themes: the human-centred design process, business models for girl impact, accelerator design and investment. 

This white paper seeks to articulate the impacts of connectivity and propose a framework of financial, social and economic key performance indicators for the last-mile connectivity (LMC) sector, in order to ultimately drive investments in the sector. The purpose of the framework is to illuminate impact pathways that link investments in LMC enterprises to positive development outcomes.

The Impact investing market map, provides three basic but crucial benefits to the impact investing industry: (1) a common definition of a thematic investment that is aligned with at least one international organisation, global market leader and/or data provider; (2) basic criteria that explain a theme in practical terms, including thematic and financial conditions to identify specific businesses and investments aligned with the definition provided;  (3) a list of KPIs used by the impact investing community to track and assess the environmental and social performance of a specific theme.

Developing solutions that address ill health can be a triple win for clients, society and financial service providers. Keeping clients and their families healthy makes business sense, but while there is great demand for such solutions, only a few providers have focussed on tackling health challenges. Our latest paper includes case studies and outlines the scope for financial service providers to develop holistic health solutions.

Bringing essential services to the poor, whether in remote rural areas, provincial towns, or in the slums of megacities, is a great challenge for governments in developing countries. Endeva has supported the World Bank’s Innovation Unit to systematically assess innovative business models that provide products and services to the poor, thus better understanding how to raise awareness of problems and solutions, designing products that address their needs, and making these products available and affordable.

The objective of this research report is to help practitioners understand what systems change means in the context of social entrepreneurship, how it is distinct from direct service or business-in-a-box models and, most importantly, what it looks like in practice. It focuses on concrete activities, processes, and leadership lessons. It also explains, how system theories can be applied across a range of circumstances.