59: The Economic Opportunity and Resilience Of Impact Investing

Tameo Impact Fund Solutions

Tameo is a spin-off from Symbiotics, including its market research, impact reporting, deal valuation and matchmaking solutions. Based on 15 years of experience built at Symbiotics, our aim is to promote the growth of the impact investing industry by increasing transparency and supporting evidence-based decision-making via independent solutions.

Safeya Zeitoun, Head of Impact at Tameo

During her 5 years at Symbiotics, Safeya has focused on assessing the social and environmental impact achieved by Symbiotics' investments. She has also contributed to industry initiatives on social performance management. Before that, she was a researcher at the Access to Knowledge for Development Center at the American University in Cairo. She holds a master's degree in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the American University in Cairo.

Ramkumar Narayanan, Head of Research & Investments at Tameo

Over 8 years, Ramkumar contributed to Symbiotics' research work in the areas of microfinance funds, markets, and social performance by developing reporting tools and co-authoring white papers and industry reports on these topics. Prior to his time at Symbiotics, he worked for over 3 years at the World Microfinance Forum Geneva, leading a working group aimed at raising awareness of the opportunities and challenges of private sector MF investments in China. Ramkumar holds a master’s degree in Public Management and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Geneva.

Key points:

• Impact is a subset of sustainable investments. Impact pushes it further by looking at the measurements.
• At Symbiotics, historically focused has been on Microfinance and research and reporting
• Tameo was created to provide more independence, to support impact investors and impact fund managers to make evidence based decision and data driven decisions for their investments, increase accountability and transparency in the market.
• Private Asset Impact Fund Report 2021 - for fund managers as benchmark
• 175 impact funds participated in the stud. 300 data points per fund. There was a flat growth in AUM for impact funds in 2020. Average fund size of USD 140-150 million with fixed income funds are much larger compared to private equity funds.
• Microfinance - No clear statistics that show with confident that micro finance alleviates poverty, but there are very clear consistent positive impact from micro finance with tangible benefits e.g micro enterprises provides a stable source of income. They are able to capture business opportunities that otherwise would not be possible for them. They won’t be as strongly affected by shocks e.g if member of family dies or storm destroys your home. 
• Micro finance creates Increased possibilities and opportunities. From survey, 90% of end borrowers say they believe quality of life has improved with access to micro finance.
• Blended finance works, there are a lot more innovation happening and  there is huge interest in it.
• Tameo is providing this market intelligence to the market as more investors still need more information.
• Regmifa -  Regional MSME Investment Fund for Sub-Saharan Africa and Loans for growth fund
• Investors need to have a change in mindset and be open to new investable opportunities

Time Stamp:
[5.29] What is impact investing?

[7:34] Symbiotics and Tameo, how Tameo got started

[12:35] Private Asset Impact Fund Report 2021, top trends in 2020

[19:16] Breakdown of investments types in the funds