Renault

SASI Students Aline Axelroud and Laure Renard were on a consulting mission for Renault Group, with a particular focus on Renault Mobilize Invest. 

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Mobilize Invest is an impact investment fund created in 2012 by Renault’s CSR department. It supports innovative businesses that generate social impact, and which activities relate to mobility (e.g for disabled or underprivileged individuals).

However, Mobilize Invest face multiple challenges that require a review of their business model in order to overcome them. This is why the SASI Students Aline Axelroud and Laure Renard were enrolled for a consulting project. During four months, they benchmarked five French corporate impact investment funds in order to identify best practices and main points. From their analysis, they suggested substantial changes for Mobilize Invest. They also studied Mobilize Invest’s deal flow in order to see what happened to businesses they chose not to invest in (are they still functionning, could they have been an interesting investment opportunity, is the sourcing efficient … etc).

Here is an overview of SASI students’ work in tandem for this entrapreunarial track. 

Methodology 

HEC Paris students’ method to deliver their consulting review to their ‘clients’ was straightforward. Firstly, meet the funds and collect the data needed, then analyze them, and finally provide an in-depth comparative analysis of what other funds do, what differs from Renault’s model, and which model has proved to be empirically the best. From there, the pair was able to advice Mobilize Invest teams on which one to adopt. 
Furthermore, Alix and Laure managed to gather data on more than 400 businesses to evaluate the deal flow. They had to classify this substantial amount of information in order to convince teams and internal stakeholders.

Presenting the benchmark to the companies who participated required a very precise communication and transcription of their information. We had to be careful to respect the confidentiality of their data as well and ensured that every piece of information was backed and checked. 

Key conclusions and learnings

The two SASI students assess their experience of the entraprenarial track quite positively. “We learned a lot about corporate impact investing funds’ practices and challenges, in different fields : fund governance, impact measurement, sourcing and selection criteria…”. This specific structure of their course gave them a real insight of what consulting is. 

Overall, students gain real practical knowledge in the field of their choice. The entraprenarial track equip HEC Paris students with essential tools to get into the job market they aspire to evolve in.