yume
Agrifood Tech | March 1, 2017
Yume raises $2 million to reduce food waste in Australia
Yume has raised $2 million to reduce food waste in Australia. Yume’s online portal, which sells “surplus food” by connecting suppliers to buyers, …
How Europe is recalibrating tech, one ESG step at a time. A crisis is usually followed by learning. If in 2022 tech private markets were defined by the crashes of some of the highest-valued and most-hyped companies, “2023 will be a year of recalibration,” write VentureESG’s Johannes Lenhard and Hannah Leach for ImpactAlpha. Take crypto. Enforcing the most simple governance principles – transparent leadership structures, conflicts of interests, board oversight, rigorous accounting (all of which FTX was missing) – would have helped to prevent some of the crashes, Lenhard and Leach argue. Lax governance has long been brewing across startups and private markets. That makes the “G” in ESG especially pertinent for VCs who find it hard to "get started" with ESG. “Installing boards, HR processes, grievance procedures and conflict-of-interest checks should always have been part of VC practice and due diligence,” write the authors.
MNT-Halan raises $200 million to expand access to financial services in Egypt. MNT-Halan’s evolution into an Egyptian “super-app” is long and complex. The quick version: In 2019, founder Mounir Nakhla merged his microfinance and digital wallet businesses with his ride-hailing business Halan after seeing the writing on the wall for Halan’s growth opportunity. “I told my co-founder this ride-hailing business is not going to go very far. What we need now is to really focus on digitally banking the unbanked—it's a huge market in Egypt,” Nakhla told ImpactAlpha last year. MNT-Halan now offers business loans, digital payments, consumer finance and e-commerce services to five million Egyptians. The company uses its own banking software to reach customers who are both online and offline and handle transactions in multiple currencies. MNT-Halan is on a fundraising tear to finance its growth. Chimera Abu Dhabi invested $200 million for a 20% stake. MNT-Halan has also raised $140 million by securitizing loans on its book through two bond offerings.
S-curves and tipping points are accelerating the low-carbon future. The future of energy is S-shaped. Adoption of technological innovations is typically slow until hitting a tipping point, typically at 5% to 10% of market share, after which they grow like gangbusters until they become mainstream. “S-Curves by their nature are disruptive and rapid,” writes CarbonTracker’s Harry Benham. In a research note exploring growth patterns in the energy transition, Benham explains that manufacturing technologies (think EVs, batteries, solar and wind systems, and heat pumps) benefit from declining costs as knowledge and expertise grow with scale. Extraction projects like fossil fuels, says Benham, “are almost the opposite: one-off, large-scale, complex efforts that are difficult, potentially impossible, to replicate and improve.”
Julie Gorte of Impax Asset Management and Neuberger Berman’s Daniel Hanson will join US SIF’s board of directors and its foundation board… Noel Kinder, chief sustainability officer at Nike; Stacy Kauk, head of sustainability at Shopify; Emma Stewart, chief sustainability officer at Netflix; Vanessa Miler-Fels, vice president of climate at Schneider Electric; and Nate Gorence, chief of staff at Impossible Foods, will join Collaborative’s sustainability board.
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Development finance institutions are essential to the mobilization of capital to slow climate change and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. So why …
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Between the true believers in investing for impact and those that, for whatever reason, have their heels dug in, there are the “quietly …
ImpactAlpha, November 21 – Bahiyah Yasmeen Robinson is nearly one-third of the way toward her goal of seeding 100 women and historically underrepresented fund …
Amy Cortese catches up with FullCycle’s Stephan Nicoleau who is at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, to talk methane, governance and catalytic …
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Despite the good intentions and creative strategies of impact investors, extreme wealth inequity persists. The climate crisis will only deepen the divide, unless …
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Editor’s note: This article is sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, which supports ImpactAlpha’s Investing in Health coverage. In partnership with J&J Impact Ventures, ImpactAlpha is exploring the …
The past year has been one of both exciting growth and unexpected challenges for the impact investing industry. Amid an uncertain macroeconomic forecast …
The attorney general of Texas earlier this month accused Citigroup of running afoul of a state law that “bars most government contracts with …
When considering catalytic capital investments in emerging markets and specifically Africa, a persistent and material challenge is the need to increase local currency participation …
Ghana securitized an education tax to improve access to education and a petrol tax to pay off legacy debts in the banking sector. …
There are many important metrics that can be used to measure a company’s impact. But none are more important than the company’s and …
Editor’s note: This blog is part of ImpactAlpha’s “Scaling Impact” series, authored by participants in the Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3) Scaling Learning Labs. Key insights …
Overcoming today’s global challenges and creating positive change requires collaboration and innovative solutions from every sector and corner of society to enable all …
You and me baby, we’re nothing but animals trying to deny our preternatural reuse instincts by confining ourselves to linear economy rules. And …
Progress is as much about implementation as it is about invention. I wish I could lay claim to these profound words. They were …
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Within the next few weeks, if everything goes according to plan, the first customers will make deposits in New Hampshire-based Walden Mutual Bank, …
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Yume has raised $2 million to reduce food waste in Australia. Yume’s online portal, which sells “surplus food” by connecting suppliers to buyers, …