Cintia Nunes
Cintia Nunes is the Director of The Mills Fabrica, a go-to solutions platform accelerating techstyle and agrifood tech innovations for sustainability and social impact. She has worked in strategy, insights, and marketing at a FMCG MNC, a Series A apparel startup, and a social impact led platform. She holds a BSc Economics degree from the University College London and is a strong advocate for cross-sector collaborations.
What we learnt
What we learnt
Cintia Nunes discussed her background and entry into the field of impact investing and social entrepreneurship. Inspired by Muhammad Yunus' "Creating a World Without Poverty", she left her corporate job to make positive changes in industries. At Mills Fabrica, they focus on textiles and food/agriculture, providing funding, connections, and advisory services to early-stage startups. They also have spaces that serve as working spaces, event spaces, and a retail store called Fabric X, which doubles as an educational hub
Cintia emphasized the intentional execution of plans to bring about positive environmental or social change as her definition of impact. She stressed the importance of measuring impact and developing models for social innovation. Although there is no standard approach, Mills Fabrica is identifying key metrics for improvement in their invested industries and piloting an impact measurement accountability exercise, where startups are required to provide impact data that aligns with their businesses. Recently, they published an Impact Report showcasing their commitment to fostering ecological and social resilience through innovative technologies. They also measure impact through non-investment activities such as workshops, where they track changes in awareness and understanding among participants.
One of the successful impact initiatives Cintia discussed was the transformation of their retail store into a hub for education and sustainability. Instead of focusing on sales, the store's key performance indicator is the number of people reached and made aware of environmental impacts. The store involves collaboration between brands showcasing their products and NGOs providing workshops. Cintia emphasized the need for a collaborative mindset, moving away from the competitive nature ingrained in the capitalist world.
Looking ahead, Cintia hoped for big companies to incorporate social innovation, startups, and technology to drive meaningful change. She emphasized the need for a shift in mindset towards systemic change and collaboration within major companies. Openness and respect towards innovations and technologies were seen as essential for fostering a thriving and collaborative business environment.
Key quotes
‘Social innovation and social businesses should not feel that because they are making an impact, people should buy their stuff. We're not charities, we are businesses.’
‘Across different stakeholders in profitable nonprofits, in the capitalist world, people are very fixated on the idea that there's always competition, and that's kind of engineered into how we think about business. Now, I think impact is very much a thing of nature that requires you to break that cycle in order to really make an impact, because the answer is that there is no one organization or one individual that can make the change.’
‘There's also an inability to see the relationships and connections that we have, whether positively or negatively to the environment and even if closer to the community society.’
‘My KPI behind the store is not necessarily sales, it's how many people we can reach out to, and also make people realise and lead that their daily lives from what they wear, what they eat, how they travel, etc. have direct positive or negative impacts to the environment. And ultimately, this is best done in a retail store.’
‘Going forward, we will require startups we invest in to provide impact data that aligns with their businesses. This data should not be difficult to collect, but it should be sufficient to measure and assess whether they follow our agreement.’