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#Featured: Open Mic

Skilling up youth. In East Africa, small and growing businesses show promise in kick-starting local economies. A growing group of businesses and initiatives is helping young people acquire the skills needed by the region’s tech-driven social startups.

Members of ANDE, a global network to promote entrepreneurship, are digging in to turn the chronic problem of youth unemployment into an opportunity for talent development.

“Skilling up for Problem-Solving Startups” is the last in a four-part series exploring the role of small and growing businesses around the world in achieving the U.N. Global Goals.

#Dealflow: Follow the Money

Google.org stakes $11.5 million on criminal justice reform. Ten organizations tracking police data and providing support services for former and juvenile offenders will get grants from Google’s nonprofit arm. “Mass incarceration is a huge issue in the United States,” wrote Google.org’s Justin Steele. “We believe better data can be can be part of the solution.” The Center for Policing Equity will get $5 million over three years to expand its National Justice Database, which tracks police stops and use of force. Measures for Justice will get $1.5 million to create a Web platform to show how local criminal justice systems treat people based on ethnicity, sex, indigent status, age and offense history. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population but 40 percent of its prison population.

HowGood raises $4.2 million for sustainable retail ratings. The Brooklyn-based startup offers consumers a sustainability and responsibility guide for 200,000 food, drink, personal care items and home goods. HowGood’s data on environmental, health and trade impacts includes packaging chemicals and labor practices. A rating is available with a mobile barcode scan. The Series A round was led by FirstMark Capital and backed by Serious Change LP, Humanity United, which fights modern-day slavery, and multiple venture capital firms and angel investors.

GreenFingers Mobile links smallholder farmers to big buyers. Netherlands-based impact investor Hivos made an undisclosed equity investment in the South African startup. GreenFingers Mobile is a partnership between an accelerator, Impact Amplifier, and Mobenzi, a mobile tech company. The GreenFingers Mobile app helps farmers manage and track farming inputs and crop sales, and provides technical assistance to farmers as needed. The platform has enrolled 2,000 farmers in three countries and expects to reach 10,000 in the next year, a representative told ImpactAlpha. Most of the world’s poor living on less than $2 per day rely on agriculture for income.

See all of ImpactAlpha’s recent #dealflow.

#Signals: Ahead of the Curve

Abraaj sets sights on India’s debt investments. Dubai-based Abraaj Group is the latest in a line of institutional investors making a move on India’s debt markets. The $10 billion money manager has traditionally focused on private equity and real estate investing, but is reportedly considering structured credit deals, like corporate loans and bonds. Among several structured credit deals Abraaj is evaluating is one in a Pune-based LED products maker. Other large foreign private equity firms like Blackstone Group, Apollo Global Management and Lone Star Funds have entered India’s structured credit market. “Many [private equity] funds are realizing that investment opportunities in late-stage, high-growth companies in India are limited; as such, many of them are turning to structured credit deals for better risk-adjusted returns,” Nachiket Naik of Mumbai-based IREP Credit Capital, told LiveMint. The shift is significant given the notorious complexity of India’s debt markets for foreign investors. Often foreign investors have to structure debt deals in India with some form of equity conversion component.

Startup ecosystems "between the coasts” get a boost. Next Coast Ventures has raises $85 million for Austin’s startup scene. The firm’s founders said they want to boost Austin’s tech scene and support early-stage startups between the coastal tech hubs. “We are finding outsized opportunities between the coasts with talented, tech-savvy entrepreneurs with vision,” co-founder Mike Smerklo said. The oversubscribed fund already has invested in six companies and was backed by an unidentified mix of institutional investors, family offices and funds-of-funds. In the U.S. southeast, Endeavor just launched an office in Atlanta, the 20-year-old impact mentorship network’s fourth U.S. market, to give a boost to the city’s growing startup scene. The Atlanta office will be led by Aaron Hurst, a former VP at tech company Ceridian, while its board will include WebMD founder Jeff Arnold, PGi founder Boland Jones and CNN medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta. Endeavor launched in 1997 to back high-impact entrepreneurs in Latin America. It has since expanded to 27 markets and has nurtured more than 1,400 entrepreneurs at 800 companies. Together these companies generated revenues of $8.1 billion in 2015 and have created more than 600,000 jobs.

#2030: Long-Termism

Iran could have a completely green electricity grid by 2030. A Finnish university study found that Iran could achieve a zero-emissions grid by 2030 with a capital expenditure of €167 billion ($187 billion). Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers, would need to develop about 49 gigawatts of solar power, 77 gigawatts of wind energy and 21 gigawatts of hydropower. A green grid could also make water desalinization cost-effective. Water scarcity is a serious and growing problem in Iran.

Iran, heavily dependent on natural gas and oil, is one of the most energy-intensive countries in the world. Per capita energy consumption is 10 times greater than in Europe, according to the study by the Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. Government subsidies for fossil fuels encourages inefficient energy use, even as recent reforms drive up energy costs for consumers.

The renewable buildout would represent a huge leap from Iran’s tiny wind and solar capacity today. But the researchers found that wind and solar power are the most economical clean energy options: 50 to 60 percent less than new nuclear capacity or fossil fuel-based power with carbon capture. Their conclusion: “A 100 percent renewable energy system for Iran is found to be a real policy option.”

Onward! Please send any news and comments to editor@impactalpha.com.