Impact-Driven Investing in New Mobility Enterprises: Perspectives from Kampala, Uganda, and Hyderabad, India
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the compatibility between impact investing and the mobility sector, and identify opportunities and barriers to amplifying net-positive impacts among new mobility enterprises, illustrated through two case cities of Kampala, Uganda, and Hyderabad, India.
Private investments present a critical funding opportunity to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, due to the growing recognition that socially and environmentally responsible solutions can generate impacts and financial returns across the risk spectrum. Innovative new mobility solutions—especially when driven by impact-oriented investments and enabled by inclusive policies—can be part of the solution for sustainable and equitable transport.
The research paper features key insights on impact-driven investments in new mobility enterprises in Kampala, Uganda, and Hyderabad, India. The paper highlights the current challenges to impact investing in mobility enterprises, including difficulties in accounting for impact, dilution of impact from other sectors, regulatory regimes and political risks that could hinder the running of mobility businesses, and entrenched stakeholders holding back investments. It concludes with opportunities to confront these challenges and pathways to safe, clean and inclusive transportation for vulnerable urban residents in the global south.
Key Findings:
- As is illustrated by the two case studies in Kampala, Uganda, and Hyderabad, India, impact investing in mobility enterprises is not common due to difficulty in accounting for impact, dilution of impact amidst cross-cutting sectors, and systemic challenges such as entrenched stakeholders holding back investments and regulatory regimes and political risks that could hinder the running of mobility businesses.
- Establishing transport impact metrics and a clear narrative of outcomes to impacts is difficult because the mobility sector serves as a critical but often unacknowledged, sometimes indirect, linkage for areas such as health, education, gender equity, urban development, and climate change.
- For impact investing in mobility enterprises to work, investors, governments, and other stakeholders must understand the enterprises’ market and institutional barriers and net impacts—both positive and negative—and be prepared to partner and support them in overcoming the barriers.
Connected to this report:
Projects
Digital Transport for Africa
Launch PlatformLaunch Platform Visit ProjectA collaborative digital commons supporting urban mobility projects in Africa through open standardized data, open-source software and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.
Part of CitiesSustainable Cities Challenge
Launch PlatformLaunch Platform Visit ProjectUniting cities and innovators to expand safe, inclusive and sustainable urban mobility solutions fit for the future.
Part of CitiesIntegrated Transport
Visit ProjectFostering multi-modal transport that connects people to opportunity and reduces emissions.
Part of Cities