Activity Description: Small Enterprise Assistance Funds ("SEAF") is a global investment firm focused on providing growth capital and operational support to businesses in emerging markets and those underserved by traditional sources of capital. SEAF selectively makes structured debt and equity investments in locally owned enterprises with high growth potential.

Based in Washington D.C., SEAF invests in more than 20 countries around the world through an international network of 15 offices in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Investors include a cross section of public and private institutions, including several of the international finance institutions, local pension funds, insurance companies, banks and family offices.

Activity Description: Triple Jump aims to provide financial services for microfinance institutions in all phases of their development. Triple Jump Fund Management, a leading microfinance fund manager, provides funding solutions, while Triple Jump Advisory Services, an independent foundation, provides consulting services and technical assistance.

Mission

Triple Jump's mission is to contribute to the sustainable development of emerging market economies by facilitating investment in micro and small enterprises.

Activity Description: Domini is an investment firm specializing exclusively in socially responsible investing. They manage $1.8 billion for individual and institutional investors who wish to integrate social and environmental standards into their investment decisions.

Each of Domini’s stock funds is actively managed according to an innovative strategy that combines the strengths of Domini Social Investments and Wellington Management.

Activity Description: ManoCap is a private equity fund manager that makes equity investments in post-conflict and other emerging African economies. ManoCap's aim is to create wealth and jobs for people in the countries in which we work, while delivering outstanding returns to our investors.

They take a proactive approach to generating investment opportunities. By conducting in-depth market research and developing deep local networks, they create visibility on opportunities in countries where significant skills and information gaps exist.

Activity Description: AfricInvest focuses on investments in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with a turnover below € 15 million at investment stage, but not excluding companies of larger size with significant growth potential.

Africinvest's main targets are growth investments, buy-outs, privatization, seed and restructuring investments. The fund seeks to acquire significant minority stake in portfolio companies through equity and quasi-equity instruments which provide the appropriate degree of control or influence. AfricInvest also seeks to acquire majority positions or to have the ability to take controlling positions in portfolio companies, based on its ability to attract and retain strong and talented management teams.

Activity Description: ISI has identified a unique niche market that it believes will translate into a promising business opportunity. In both the U.S. and in Mexico ISI is formalizing agreements with organizations that currently cater to or want to offer products and services to the Latino market. These include hometown community organizations, local and national money transfer, check-cashing and pay-day loan organizations, and local and national convenience store and pharmacy chains. Mexican companies such as Gigante, Elektra and Novamedic are already part of the program.

Activity Description: CGAP's goal is a world in which poor people are considered legitimate clients of a countries' financial system--a world where all poor people have permanent access to affordable and client responsive financial services, that are delivered by many complementary institutions, such as NGOs, banks, and cooperatives, in many different ways. Finance for the poor will include savings, cash transfers, insurance, and loans, each tailored to the different needs of poor people. Microfinance will become an integral part of a competitive and diverse financial system that fosters the growth of all segments of society, and will no longer be a marginal or niche sector.

Activity Description: Net1 is a provider of smart card technologies and systems that create a secure and affordable transacting channel between formal businesses and the “un-banked” and “under-banked” populations of developing countries who have no or limited access to traditional banking facilities.

Net1 has developed the UEPS (Universal Electronic Payment System) that makes use of their patented FTS (Funds Transfer System) methodology to provide a fully integrated payment, switching and settlement system suitable for multiple applications and services, meeting the requirements of the un-banked and under-banked populations.

Activity Description: The scheme was launched for the farmers of Karnataka who are members of agricultural cooperative societies. In the event of a sudden health problem, even the farmer who has some land and cattle finds himself at the mercy of the local moneylender who charges exorbitant rates of interest when he needs to deposit money for treatment. The scheme has proved to be a boon to the rural community who spirals into depths of debt and suicide, due to the illness, crop failure, famine and drought.

Activity Description:

Wulff Capital assists African entrepreneurs in commercializing their health innovations. These innovative products can improve wellbeing and lower health costs on a global scale. Product commercialization can create new jobs and protect botanic diversity.

 

Due Diligence
Their extensive network of business incubation professionals recruit the best innovations and entrepreneurs to participate in Wulff's program. They screen these entrepreneurs for passion, expertise, and ethics. Then they screen their products for market demand, competitive environment and profit potential.

Activity Description:

The Spark Group is an idea incubator working at the grassroots level in India. Using insights from academic research, the Spark Group develops promising ideas into commercially viable business ventures that deliver valuable services to poor communities. The Spark Group is funded, in part, by the IFMR Trust and is supported by The Boston Pledge.

Spark's founding team has over 50 years of experience in world-class organizations such as McKinsey, Microsoft, Deloitte, IBM, Procter & Gamble and the World Bank.

Funded by the Network Enterprises Fund, Spark's advisors hold positions of eminence in organizations like Harvard University, MIT, The Boston Pledge and ICICI Bank.

The projects include Spark Accreditation - in which for a fee, any school can receive a letter-grade evaluation of its quality. Another project is Spark Guru - a teacher assessment service where trained teachers would be sent to identified schools and enhance the learning capabilities of children. Also in the pipeline are initiatives in the space of technology solutions for microfinance and education investment.

Activity Description:

An estimated 15.7 million people in Brazil work in the informal economy as microentrepreneurs, outnumbering formal sector entrepreneurs by more than three to one. Of these informal microentrepreneurs 93% run profitable businesses. However, 84% of these microentrepreneurs did not have access to credit.

In November 1996 at a meeting in Fortaleza, the World Bank and Banco do Nordeste, a development bank formed to support growth in northeastern Brazil, decided to initiate a collaborative process to jointly implement a local development program based on the idea of micro-credit. Motivated by the fact that small informal companies – family owned and small properties - were not being served by the Bank's financing activities due to the restrictive regulation of Brazil's Banking Systems, Banco do Nordeste and the World Bank decided to develop and launch a pilot low-income bank, targeting micro-entrepreneurs from informal sectors.

When asked why Banco do Nordeste decided to launch a microcredit institution, executive director, Stelio Gama Lyra Junior responds simply “we are a development bank; it was a logical step”.3 The fast growth and success of the CrediAmigo program suggest that he might
be right. After only three years in operation, CrediAmigo had already become Latin America’s second largest microcredit institution both in terms of number of loans and the amounts invested.

With the experience gained trough its pilot program, CrediAmigo officially launched its microcredit program and has continued to grow steadily. In fact, it has achieved 40% growth each year since 1998. As of May 2003, CrediAmigo has 123,203 active clients with an active portfolio of R$72 (US$ 24.69) 9 million and an average loan size of R$ 581.35 (US$ 199.33). CrediAmigo offers loans at 3.5% monthly rate (approximately 51% per year). As an incentive for customers to pay on time, CrediAmigo reimburses its customers 15% of their interest payment when their loan is paid in-full and on-time.10 The maximum loan size allowed is R$4,000 (US$ 1,371.51). In the future, CrediAmigo plans to continue to expand its services throughout the northeast of Brazil, as well as offer greater product/service selection such as savings accounts and insurance products.

Click here to read the full report on CrediAmigo.

Activity Description: With three quarters of its national population living in rural areas, access to primary healthcare is one of the most pressing issues facing India’s businesses and policymakers. Further complicating this picture is the fact that the government has so far had difficulty making a sufficient financial commitment to fund free, needs-based health services. Although currently on the rise, this spending only accounts for less than one percent of the gross domestic product. Private healthcare groups have also been unable to fill this gap in a country where nearly a third of the populaiton lives in poverty. The entrepreneurs behind Gram Mooligai found a unique opportunity within this seemingly insurmountable challenge to deliver much needed health services to India’s rural poor while tapping into new markets underserved by public and private actors alike.

Activity Description: DSM is a German company that creates and innovates products and services that promote a healthier, more sustainable, enjoyable, and efficient way of working and living. DSM's Nutrition Improvement Program, which focuses on the fortification of foods with vitamins and minerals in order to prevent disease and mortality due to malnutrition, is DSM's first initiative in the context of the 'Base of the Pyramid'. This is a new development in the field of sustainability to which the company will increasingly be paying attention. The 'Base of the Pyramid' concept involves the development and implementation of new, innovative business models in developing countries in order to profitably serve the needs of the four billion people living on at most a few dollars per day.