Charm Impact and Signify Foundation Partner to Scale Loans for Local Entrepreneurs in Africa
Today, Charm Impact, a peer-to-peer impact investment platform providing debt finance to early-stage clean energy entrepreneurs in developing markets, announced a funding partnership with Signify Foundation.
The partnership will provide Charm Impact with capital to support the next phase of their loan rollout. Signify Foundation’s capital will be embedded alongside private investors but take a subordinated position. In this way the funds will incentivise private investment into projects with a perceived higher risk.
Yue Cui, Director of Signify Foundation said, “We are really excited by this collaboration and Charm Impact’s model as we believe it presents a market-based approach to commercialise impact outcomes at scale”.
Charm focuses on supporting early-stage companies that are providing clean energy to communities in developing economies that lack access to electricity and clean cooking, with a dedicated focus on supporting local entrepreneurs and an investment lens for gender diversity. Since their founding in 2018, Charm has been supported by Innovate UK’s Energy Catalyst programme, Energy 4 Impact’s Crowd Power initiative and the Good Energies Foundation. With 10 active loans across West Africa, East Africa and India and no defaults across the portfolio, Charm’s go-to-market model has been refined and is now ready to scale.
“For the energy access sector to truly scale over the long term we need to promote the growth of profitable, sustainable, locally owned companies,” said Charm co-founder Gavriel Landau. “Charm is relentlessly mission driven and focussed on enabling impact at scale, so we need to challenge traditional models of giving to ensure they are fostering commercially viable, scalable outcomes.”
About Charm Impact
Charm Impact is an impact investment platform providing loans of up to 24 months that range from £10,000 to £250,000 for local, clean energy entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as South and Southeast Asia.
About Signify Foundation
The Signify Foundation is an organization dedicated to supporting underprivileged and underserved communities across the world by enabling access to light. When pursuing this mission, the Foundation expects to leverage on Signify’s expertise and knowledge to help develop and provide easily-accessible, sustainable lighting systems that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives.
