ABSTRACT
elea's investments focus on early stage impact enterprises from the post-start-up to the early growth phase. This is a challenging period during enterprise development, where entrepreneurial promises do not yet translate into significant revenues and both strategic and operational risks are still high. This is why investments at this stage require philanthropic capital. In terms of investment themes, elea chose the following four areas that have a clear link to absolute poverty and are based on models with plausible theories of change to significantly improve livelihoods in a sustainable way: global agricultural value chains, informal retail and last-mile distribution, employable skills building, and digital solutions. In this chapter, we use examples from elea's portfolio to describe specific impact mechanisms within these four themes, and we highlight elea's ambition to achieve leverage and scale as it makes its investment choices. The examples chosen show how different leverage factors, such as technology and organization, work together to realize the growth potential of various impact enterprises.
