In a world grappling with increasing inequalities, we believe inclusive business offers an opportunity for investors to meaningfully contribute to improving the quality of life of lower-income populations.
Inclusive businesses engage and create value for low-income consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs in their supply chains while striving for financial success—and they are key to private sector efforts to address poverty and inequality. These businesses use market-based solutions that enable people at the base of the economic pyramid to expand their access to essential goods and services at affordable prices and improve their livelihoods. Inclusive businesses do this on a scalable, commercially-viable basis across the value chain.
Investors play a critical role in supporting inclusive businesses and in helping them to increase their impact on low-income populations. However, until now, investors had few practical resources to draw on when developing an intentional approach to inclusive business investing. With the launch of the Inclusive Business Guide, we aim to change that. This guide fills that gap by leveraging our knowledge and the experience of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), British International Investment (BII), and other inclusive business investors. This guide seeks to help investors allocate capital to inclusive businesses and to support inclusive business strategies among their investee companies. It also aims to coalesce investors around a common approach to investing in inclusive businesses.
As we collectively strive for a more equitable and sustainable future, we trust this guide will enable investors to increase their engagement with, and support of, inclusive business. This in turn will unlock the power of the private sector to contribute to the goals of reducing inequality.
