Beyond Impact by Ring #22 - Holiday homework: reflect on how our activities fit into their ecosystem

Featured with Marie-Sarah Mailliard, Co-founder @Regen School

Jul 17, 2024

Dear community,

Summer holiday is a time for reflection and for asking ourself the right questions. And one particular question seems fundamental to us: how can our activities fit into their ecosystem?

At Ring Capital, the more we experience impact through our investments, the more we find similarities with the way living ecosystems function. Therefore, understanding and collaborating with other stakeholders within our ecosystem appears vital to bring about change and to maximise our impact.

This thinking is a the heart of regenerative economy’s principles, which Marie-Sarah Mailliard gives a glimpse of in this newsletter’s interview. In this interview, you will also find more about the origins and ambitions of Regen School and get an insight into how business executives can adopt a regenerative approach.

This is what Beyond Impact is about: showing how people, companies, investors and institutions can act and play their part in this transition.

🫵 Which entrepreneur, solution, project or concept related to impact would you like us to cover in this newsletter? Feel free to send us your ideas!

The interview

'We will have won when we are no longer seen as a committed school, because this commitment will have become the norm.'

Marie-Sarah Mailliard, Co-founder @Regen School

In recent months, we have heard a lot about the concept of regeneration. What is your own definition?

To me, regeneration has to be seen as strategic thinking about an organisation's economic model and how it collaborates with its stakeholders. Regenerative economy is an emerging economic thought closely linked to the concepts of contributive and positive economies. It involves moving from a linear resource extraction system (extraction, transformation, consumption, waste production) to a system that is not only circular but also contributes to restoring the ecosystem services necessary for our survival. This system includes traditional stakeholders (clients, suppliers, employees, etc.) as well as living organisms and ecosystem services, assessing its economic model and activities based on their impact on living organisms and integrating their restoration. Often, the best way to restore is to allow resources to regenerate naturally, which means producing less.

Read the full interview

Ring ecosystem’s insights

When you are part of Ring Capital’s ecosystem, there's never a dull moment! Here's the latest news.

🗞️ Le Hibou: Les Echos published an article on Le Hibou, highlighting the company's growth and the development of a new service dedicated to self-employed consultants.

⚡️ Hylight has announced its partnership with Enedis to decarbonise power line inspection in France. This partnership will enable them to accelerate the precise, long-distance inspection of distribution lines, with no in-flight greenhouse gas emissions.

🎂 Happy birthday to Karos! 10 years later, Karos counts more than 500 public transportation authorities and companies as clients and more than 1 million users in 5 countries.

🌍 Konexio launches Konexio Africa. Since the start of the first programmes on the African continent, Konexio has trained 450 people, mainly refugees. The launch of Konexio Africa will enable them to extend their programmes to other countries in East Africa, consolidate their current initiatives and build local capacity for a lasting impact.

🇫🇷 Vestack has been selected as part of France 2030 programme!

Ring news

We are delighted to announce…

…our participation in:

⚡️🏭 Enerdigit is a company specialising in flexibility solutions for the electricity network. Positioned mainly on small and medium-sized industrial sites, the company makes it possible to add new demand-side management capacity to the electricity grid every year, while enabling industrial companies to offset additional costs associated with the rising cost of electricity by lowering their bills.

€40m operation — Ring Altitude

️⚡️🏬 Orus Energy is an energy flexibility platform enabling commercial building operators to automatically shift flexible loads off carbon peak times, thereby supporting the balance and resilience of the grid. All thanks to Orus’ AI-powered thermal inertia algorithms.

€2.2m pre-seed round — GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC

☀️🏠 Samara is a solar energy company actively contributing to a fair transition: by supporting households in their energy transition through personalised services (installation of solar panels, batteries and electric vehicle chargers), Samara promotes a more efficient and sustainable model while increasing households’ purchasing power (up to 70% reduction in their electricity bills!).

€9m Series A round — Ring Mission

💻 🌱 Sopht proposes an innovative SaaS solution which monitors, evaluates and reduces the carbon footprint and financial costs of a company's IT assets in real-time. Their solution is a very interesting one as it contributes to the decarbonisation of the IT sector while enabling cost savings.

€3.3m seed round — GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC

… the arrival of three new members to the Ring team:

Julie Boirel joins our corporate team as Head of Investor Relations,
Shrutika Singh joins Ring Africa’s investment team,
Constance Courtalon joins Ring Mission’s investment team.

🌟 We are thrilled to count on their expertise and dedication to build one of the leading referent ecosystems in impact investing in Europe and beyond.

… and the publication of our 2023 Impact Report:

Download our 2023 Impact Report

Before summer, we organised…

… the first edition of Generations Cocktail:

In June, we co-organised the first Generations Cocktail with EDHEC Entrepreneurs.

This event was an opportunity to review the first 9 months of our impact pre-seed & seed fund GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC and to celebrate the synergies between Ring Capital's and EDHEC Business School's ecosystems.
Together and through GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC, we aim to raise awareness on impact investing among tomorrow's decision-makers and entrepreneurs, while supporting ambitious and innovative projects today. 🌱

… PALM’s closing event:

The closing event of the first edition of PALM took place in June as well.

PALM — which stands for Program to Accelerate Leadership and Mixity, is a program jointly launched by Ring Capital and Serena with the ambition of empowering female C-level executives in our portfolio companies and mobilising CEOs to create inclusive corporate cultures. This event was an opportunity to bring together the participants of this first edition and to lay the groundwork for the future… We look forward to continuing this adventure alongside Serena and, most certainly, other funds. Stay tuned! ✨