Impact 40: key meetings to accelerate development

On August 29, at the Universités d'été de l'économie de demain, the winners of the Impact 40/120 index had the opportunity to meet, for the second year running, innovation, CSR, HR and purchasing directors from major groups such as SNCF, La Poste, JC Decaux, Microsoft and RTE. 

These meetings, organized by the Impact France movement, have a clear objective: to create innovative partnerships between large corporations and impact-driven scale-ups.

• For start-ups, meeting representatives of major groups is an essential lever for accessing new customers or partners. The mapping of impact start-ups, carried out by Impact France with France Digitale and Bpifrance, shows that, every year, forging commercial partnerships is one of the strategic priorities of innovative companies.
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• For major groups, these exchanges represent a unique opportunity to collaborate with promising, established players with a real impact and concrete innovations, and thus strengthen their competitiveness.

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New this year: a meeting with impact funders

At a time when access to financing is a major challenge for innovative companies, Impact France wanted to offer a new format: a meeting between Impact 40/120 winners and funders. 

Major players in impact financing such as Eurazeo, Alter Equity, INCO Ventures, 50 Partners and Banque des Territoires, all members of the Cercle Finance d'Impact France, were able to exchange views with the directors of start-ups and scale-ups in the index.

For financiers, these meetings are an opportunity to identify promising projects that combine economic performance with social and environmental impact. For their part, start-up managers benefit from concrete advice, and can identify the funders best placed to support them in their current or future fund-raising efforts.

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The aim of these formats is to accelerate the development of innovative, high-impact solutions. 

These discussions are fully in line with the mission of Impact France's Cercle start-ups and the Impact 40/120 index:

• highlight start-ups with impact to strategic players,
  
  
• create the conditions for their development,
  
  
• recognize social and environmental innovation as an essential pillar of tomorrow's economy.
  
  

This year's Summer University was an opportunity to strengthen collaboration between high-impact start-ups, major corporations and financial backers: one of the keys to making innovation a factor in accelerating the ecological and social transition.