Scaling and Impact Learning Paper

The GSMA Innovation Fund’s impact strategy is rooted in scaling digital innovations that create positive social impact. The Fund supports small and growing enterprises so they sustain their impact, grow as businesses and are commercially sustainable.

While the Fund understands how to support grantees to scale commercially, there is less clarity on how commercial growth correlates with scaling social impact and what support might be offered specifically for the latter. The purpose of this work is to provide actionable recommendations for the GSMA Innovation Fund to support grantees in maintaining social impact during market growth, answering the questions:

1- To what extent are grantees maintaining, evolving or deprioritising products and approaches that serve economically vulnerable users as they scale?
2- Which business models, product strategies or operational choices support the ongoing inclusion of economically vulnerable users?
3- What actions or support can help grantees navigate scaling without compromising social impact?

Using three cases of grantees from the GSMA Innovation Fund’s climate action rounds (ATEC, Koolboks and Vitara); interviews and feedback from the GSMA Innovation Fund team; and relevant literature, we interrogated how commercial scaling and social impact scaling are related and how best to support social impact scaling.

Read the ‘Scaling and Impact Learning Paper Executive Summary to find out more.