Become an Impacc venture candidate!
- Are you an entrepreneur in Tanzania, Rwanda, or Uganda?
- With an innovative, local, green product or service?
- Creating sustainable jobs?
- In bottom of pyramid communities?
- In need of funding to scale your social business?
- Looking for a true partner at eye level?
What we offer
Selected entrepreneurs will not only receive funding within 6-12 months but also customized technical support to complement their efforts in building scalable businesses that create local, green jobs.
Financial Support
- Smart equity investment between $30,000 and $150,000
- Non-profit, minority shareholding
- Based on agreed business valuation and investment consideration
- Potential to receive additional loan facility beyond initial equity funding to scale the business further
- Further fundraising support and tools
Business Growth Support
- As an investor in the business, we become a partner that provides guidance on strategy and planning.
- Impacc occupies 1 to 2 board seats.
- The business receives mentorship from key industry expertise and coaches to provide tailored support.
- Social media strategy support.
- Specialized, one on one coaching with founders.
- Access to the Impacc global network and partners to help grow and scale the business
- Branding strategy support.
We are looking for innovative social businesses that:
- are run by committed founders with strong entrepreneurial skills
- have a proven business model and can demonstrate potential and ability to scale
- require funds to fuel the next level of growth
- have high potential to create local green jobs and improve living conditions for their communities
- are rooted in the local economy throughout the value chain
- use technology (high-tech or low-tech) or knowledge/skills transfer to generate impact
- focus on inclusion of women or people living in rural areas
Application Process Timeline
Application & Investment Process
In order to make sure that you fit our investment criteria, we undertake a rigorous selection and due diligence process. Once we have decided to invest, we will run a fundraising campaign to close a raise for your business. From selection to successful raise of investment it may take 6 to 12 months.
Here is the whole process laid out:
Step 1: Initial Application
Fill out the form to give us an insight of your business. This includes detailed budgetary projections and financial plans. After we have identified a potential match for investment based on your application.
Step 2: Selection and Due Diligence
If you are selected as a potential Impacc investment, our investment committee will undertake due diligence of your social business. This may include further interviews with your team, calls with references, and input from external technical experts. Further details on the due diligence process will be provided at that stage.
Step 3: Investment Decision
The investment committee will make their final decision based on the results of the due diligence. Applicants who meet the investment criteria during the due diligence process enter a concluding consideration by the investment committee who make the final decision on which business to fundraise for.
Step 4: Fundraise & Investment
Once your business has been conditionally approved for investment, a letter of investment intent is signed, while Impacc proceeds to run a fundraising campaign prominently featuring all selected businesses. The campaign take up to 12 months to successfully close a raise, depending on the amount and attractiveness of the business case.
Step 5: Scale & Sustain
After successful raise, a valuation process will be undertaken and an investment agreement entered into which will include growth milestones. The businesses invested in get in-depth next level of growth services such as business mentorship and technical expertise, strategic guidance and business modelling, linkages to further investment opportunities as well as fundraising support and tools to attain envisioned growth scale.
Eligibility Criteria
- Social businesses targeting base of pyramid communities in Africa (impacting population living on less than $2 a day)
- Impacc is committed to supporting the acceleration and transition to scale of social businesses that have a clear impact generation plan. The impact should be trackable and measurable.
- Measuring success and sharing lessons learned. Impacc supports social businesses that are committed to evaluating their own success, with plans to collect data and feedback to inform decisions. This includes operational monitoring and ecaluation, as well as impact evaluation. Innovators from learning organizations that make data driven decisions are a good fit for our investment.
- Social businesseswith a clear, ideally regional, scale and growth plans to reach millions of people living on less than $2 a day in Africa are highly preferred.
- The business should have a clear profitability roadmap.
- The social business should have the potential to create local green jobs, improving living standards of base of pyramid communities in Africa.
- Impacc works with social business founders showing the relevant expertise and capabilities to achieve success. We also want to see that your team has clear roles, responsibilities, and the time commitment needed to be successful.
- Teams should be able to demonstrate a strong knowledge of the problems they are addressing and what approaches are likely to work in the local environment surrounding their enterprise ( e.g operational, geographical, political or social context)
- Impacc targets already existing social businesses, which have been in operations for more than two years and have raised more than $20,000 in either grant, convertible grants, venture capital or private equity at the time of submission.
- Venture must be generating revenues of USD 20,000- USD 150k annually and must be willing to grow this 200,000 USD in two years.
- The social business should be open to discuss franchise approach as part of scaling model.
- The founding individuals must be above 18 years of age at the time of the application and nationals or residents of Africa.
- The founding team should be Africa Nationals, living in Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, which are our countries of focus.
- All members must be fully proficient in written and spoken English.
- The initiative requires founder participation. All founding team members must commit to participate in the program. Lack of commitment or active engagement will render the team or innovation ineligible for the program.
