

Take-a-Stake aims to turn the cross-cutting challenges of water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), waste, and linked sectors, into opportunities via investment and advisory support for entrepreneurs, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
SMEs, a subset of private sector companies, are commercially viable businesses, typically from 5 to 250 employees and looking for investments ranging about from €20,000 to €2 million. They have strong potential for growth–creating economic, social, and environmental benefits. SMEs are best suited to serve the needs of the emerging poor, establishing a new middle class, and providing basic goods and services. Take-a-Stake is currently active in India, Kenya, and Uganda.
Our activities to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
Our Take-a-Stake programme is mobilising investments for local entrepreneurs. Activities to support this include:
- Conducting studies on the WASH and waste sectors to understand the dynamics, investment risks and opportunities, and the potential impact of the fund via its investees.
- Identifying and analysing 100+ financially sustainable small and growing businesses (SGBs) that need more than €100 million in capital to expand and increase their impact.
- Building relationships with potential investors and co-investors.
- Starting to build impact measurement and portfolio management tools.
Sustainability
The outputs from this project will be utilized in other WASTE projects. This programme is a pilot for a potentially full-scale investment fund. Once successfully incubated, we presume the lifespan would be at least 10 years to contribute to sustainable regional economic growth and employment.
The Take-a-Stake programme is active from 2021-24.
