Lighthouse MASSIV, Mastercard’s partnership program dedicated to finding and scaling the next impact unicorn, is pleased to announce Swedish company Investure as the program winner of the 2021 fall edition among other finalists imagiLabs and Skrym. Othalo from Norway wins the impact potential award.

The program winner was announced during the Lighthouse FinTech For Future official side event at SLUSH in Helsinki, where people gathered to listen to their pitches. During the Lighthouse MASSIV 2021 fall program, a 3-month workshop series, the five participating companies received tailor-made support from advisors at Swedbank, Danske Bank, UNDP, Nordic Impact Funds, and Synch.

According to program advisors, Investure–a Swedish impact exchange company working to bridge the excessive funding gap in developing markets, showed a high partnership potential and made tremendous progress in the program. Investure’s blockchain based solution eliminates investment barriers through digitalization of private market transactions, asset servicing and creating liquidity through the secondary market. Their unique solution proves to be highly impactful in developing markets, and over the course of the program Investure closed a deal and onboarded new investors on their platform. In a little over two months, Investure started concrete partnership dialogues with amongst others the African Development Bank, EEP Africa, UNDP and Nordic Development Fund. Next to that, they were matched with five investors during the Mastercard Lighthouse Investor Demo Day and exposed to more than ten new investors with contacts ongoing. Together with UNDP, they worked on refining their impact measurement criteria which brings the company closer to tracking their mission of bridging the $2,5 billion SDG funding gap to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Winning the Mastercard Lighthouse MASSIV program means a lot to Investure. With help from valuable advisors and experts, many opportunities came out of the program for us. This will definitely make a difference in our scaling journey to close the funding gap in developing markets and establish a global exchange for impact”.

– Joakim Blom, CEO Investure

“Investure has a very promising solution aiming to decrease the funding gap in developing markets. MASSIV’s vision of touching upon the lives of one billion people by 2025 by helping impact tech companies scale gets closer to achievement each edition. The companies of the 2021 fall class impact both people and planet, and we are excited to support startups like Investure, Othalo, imagiLabs, Skrym and Gaia in their growth journeys and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals”

– Mats Taraldsson, Head of Innovation, Fintech and Impact-tech Engagement, Mastercard Nordics and Baltics

Othalo was selected the winner of the Impact Potential award. The Norwegian company has a patented technology that allows for upcycling local plastic waste into building material and build adequate and affordable housing locally, on an industrial scale. This solves two global problems: The worlds growing plastic waste situation and the worlds housing deficiency in the growing economies of the world. Once their solution develops further and scales, Othalo has the potential to build 1 million houses in Africa, by re-using 6 million tons of plastics from the ocean and creating jobs for more than 200K people.