Cape Town, South Africa-based incubator and consultancy firm Impact Amplifier has opened applications for its Eco-Innovators investment-readiness programme. Set to start in late January 2016, the programme will include up to 10 entrepreneurs who focus on the environmental goods and services sector.
Speaking to Impact Amplifier’s managing partner Tanner Methvin earlier this year, he noted that while impact investing has spiked in recent years — from US$4-billion in 2011 to US$12.7-billion in 2014 globally — investors are still facing a range of different challenges in deploying their capital.
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Some of these challenges include access to quality deal flow, argues the Impact Amplifier. Due to geographic distance and a lack of market understanding, international investors find it difficult to locate investment-readiness deals. Other obstacles include high-investment risk which are often where most opportunities lie.
With funding from Stichting Doen in Holland, the Impact Amplifier hopes to address these issues through its five-month investment-readiness programme.
As noted in a recent media release, the Eco-Innovators programme covers everything from building your impact case, business modelling, how to gain market access, a clear growth strategy, financial planning, pitching to investors, and writing an investment case for funding.
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Entrepreneurs active in areas such as alternative energy, solid waste reuse and effluent treatment, clean water access, sustainable agriculture, and ecological building, and so forth, are welcomed to join the programme.
Eco-Innovators is open to applicants until 15 November and the programme will commence in late January 2016. Entrepreneurs from all over South Africa are invited to find more details about the programme, eligibility and the application process on the website.
