Holding NEM coins doesn't mean you are an investor? how can you actually invest in the project.
Buying XEM means you are investing in NEM. The belief is that as the larger NEM ecosystem grows, so too will the demand for xem. We are already much further along than Bitcoin was when it was 2 years old.
What's stopping these companies from rolling out their own private blockchains (say, their own copy of Mijin), and entirely exclude NEM, and then make them available for their target groups (read: not the NEM stakeholders)?
(Please don't tell me it's the relationship between these companies and the NEM devs and their good hearts.)