Understanding Impact Investment An insight into Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Owing to technological innovation and changing lifestyles of people, lots of problems need immediate attention to resolve. Even the sustainable development goals are defined as per societal issues and thus required a revolution to tackle these. The impact investment can solve these issues as it manages the social impact along with financial return. Impact investors can provide a bridge for larger public interventions through bearing more risk or providing more cushions to risk which public institutions are afraid to take up (UNDP, 2016). Although impact investment was coined in the 1st decade of 21stcentury however, making investment with ethical purpose existed earlier also (O’Donohoe et al.,2010). Through this chapter, the author tried to explore the challenges and opportunities in the emerging area of impact investment. This paper is based on the various reports and research papers published by leading agencies and researchers in impact investment and social entrepreneurship. This paper is limited to the opportunities lying with the food & agriculture sector and energy efficient and climate change sector.

Keywords: Impact Investment, Food & Agriculture Sector Investments, Energy Sector Investments, Challenges Impact Investors, Social Entrepreneurship