Impact Investing: Beyond Capital’s perspective, with Brian Axelrad and Nicholas Java

In this episode I speak with Brian Axelrad and Nicholas Java: investors at Beyond Capital. They are a special type of investor, which is the topic of our discussion. Beyond Capital operates as an impact investor, an interesting player in the East Africa business space. Like traditional investment, impact investment is fundamentally a vehicle for injecting money into ventures, the difference lies in that the success of the investment is measured not just in financial terms, but also for social good. As we discuss, this can be a tricky concept to define – but the broad sense is that these investments will accept a trade off on pure financial return on investment, in exchange for promoting pre-defined societal objectives. For Beyond Capital they invest in businesses that address the lack of access to basic goods. We go through how they whittle down opportunities in their pipeline, the challenges of reporting on impact and, where they see the greatest opportunity for impact in the social entrepreneur space. With this episode there are also lots of links and reports that we mention, and so be sure to check out the show notes for more information about both Beyond Capital and impact investment in general. READ MORE AT:https://theeastafricabusinesspodcast.com/2018/08/16/impact-investing-beyond-capitals-perspective-with-brian-axelrad-and-nicholas-java/