The Impact Moment where Capital Solves Global Challenges with Komal Sahu #14

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith. And welcome to another edition of Redefining Tomorrow. It's here where we're to discuss topics that may redefine your future. They may redefine how we live on this planet, or they may help you redefine anything else you'd like to consider. A quote that I've lived by and for and through since I've been a young kid is, you can't fix yesterday. You can only create tomorrow. Today we're going to redefine tomorrow. We have a very interesting topic we're going to be exploring today, which is the impact moment where capital solves global challenges. And we have Komal Sahu with us. How are you, Komal?

I'm very well, thank you.

Let me tell you a little bit about Komal. She's chief of sustainable finance at AVPN in Singapore. And over history, she's been involved in impact venture, business development, strategy, advisory and finance. Worked for a Big four in London. She's been involved in the startup in the tech sector. So she's been all over in terms of her capabilities. The reason she's been asked on the line today to talk with us is because I heard a podcast or a program and she was brilliant. The way she articulated her perspective and the data she had delivered, I said I can learn from her and I know that everybody else can learn from the experience that she delivers. So let's get started. Komal, you have an outline for us?

I do. It's the impact moment where capital solves global challenges. And I'll be going through that impact moment, personal as well as global. I'll be talking about the role of capital and collaboration.

Hold on. Role of capital and collaboration.

I'll be discussing what is deliberate leadership. Technology as an enabler.

Hold on. Technology as enabler and enabler. Okay.

Private wealth and moving the needle.

Private wealth and moving the needle.

Next, I'll be discussing corporate, environmental and social impact in Asia.

And social impact in Asia.

And next, strategic philanthropy and innovation.

Strategic philanthropy and innovation. Okay.

Public sector alliances.

Public sector alliances.

And why I believe now is the right time and why I am an optimist.

Right time. And why you are an optimist. Okay, so let's start with this first one, the role of capital and collaboration. Help me understand what's going on here.

Actually, I'm starting off with my personal impact moment. I think it'll give you perspective of how I got into the space and how I think I started on my journey. And then I will be delving into.

The okay, so you actually started with the impact moment, which is great. So my numbers are a little bit off, but I think we can follow it. Go ahead.

Thank you so much, David, for having me. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

Just talk to me, just tell me the stories. We'll move from there.

Okay. Well, I, as you said, I was in the uk. I spent my growing and formative years in the uk. I was born there. By way of background, I'm an accountant and a tax specialist. I've been involved with the financial services sector. So I would say, in essence, a bean counter. We kind of lived in a leafy suburb of London. My kids walked to school in the mornings in a wooded path.

Where did you live in London?

In Wimbledon. So very bucolic, very comfortable existence for both myself and my family. So in 2006, we moved to India, to Mumbai, because of my husband's job, I'd lived in India as a teenager, but never as an adult. And, you know, once you get to India, the reality of inequality and poverty is very apparent. You see it at every curbside and every corner. My children, I think, were the first to observe it. And we discussed this when we, when we last spoke as well. You know, the disparity is really, really apparent. You know, you see children at traffic lights begging for food and money. My own personal moment came one morning. I was dropping my kids off to school and. And I was visiting my mother in law, who lived very close by. I see a kid on the roadside corner, half on the curb and part on the road, and I wonder if he's fallen. So that the car I was in just stopped outside my mother in law's apartment building. I get out to walk towards this child to check in on him, and I realize as I get closer, this is not a child, this is a grown man. His body so shriveled up and emaciated, it's the size of a child, like a young boy. I heard a street vendor from across the road telling me not to touch him because he's dead. And I don't want to touch this man because his body's disheveled, he's partly clothed. So I reach out to the driver who's dropped me off, say, you know, can you help me move the body? And, you know, in India it's unholy to touch a dead body. So I had to have quite an act convincing him that someone like him, who's driving close to the curb, even if the man's dead, will chop this body up in Two if we don't move him. So my mother in law comes out with all this commotion. As I turn to speak to her, I see a police jeep pulling up and I kind of move away because you don't get involved once the police is there. I see this constable jump out of the jeep. I hear him yelling across the road again. The vendor across the road, he's dead. So I see this constable come out and you know, I can see he prods this man, okay, with the tip of his shoe to check for movement. Science of life. You know, to me this is the final act of wretchedness. You know, that poverty is just bestowed on this poor man. His body is so emaciated, starved to the size of a child. Clearly not someone who's been born to privilege and poor fellow, the indignities he must have suffered while he was alive. Now in death, he's got no dignity either. It's got kind of taken away from him. And I felt stolen because of the sheer accident of birth. We consider ourselves to be a civilized society with centuries of learning and history, but we're denying men their dignity both in life as well as in death. So I had, during my time, I used to drop my kids off to school and then I would go and work at a kids.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Duke, was he dead?

Yes. And he was, he was, it was, it was sad to witness even what happened afterwards because they, at least I understood that, you know, this is an unmarked. And in India they cremate, they bulk cremate unclaimed bodies. So there's no dignity in the entire process.

So that was the first question. The second is I you. What made you decide with all the other challenges in India? And it's surprising that you bring it, brought this up as your first story because I know a lot of people will go to India and they never talk about these things. And you are taking it to heart as your impact moment. So why did you decide this man on this side of the road, on this day was the one that you are going to make a stand on?

I think images are important and I think you hold on to the ones that shape you. For me, that image kind of stays. It made me want to say that, you know, we're clearly. This is just inequitable, it's unfair, it's simply wrong. This is something I want to take a stand on. And then, you know, I continued living in India for two and a half years. I worked at a, you know, I used to drop my kids, used to work at A kid's orphanage. And I saw it more of it in different forms during my time there. It just seemed wrong to me. And, you know, that's where that image stayed with me. And that image influenced what I do. It was a realization that I have the ability to make a difference, no matter how small. I just want to impact the life of one, make it better, and it's better than impacting the life of none. So that's the thinking when I moved to Singapore as well. And, you know, Singapore is a place of, you know, you've visited. Yeah, yeah. And you've been in this funk. This is gleaming glass towers. It's all shiny, it's all new.

Nothing. Nothing like India.

Yes, nothing like India.

Let's just make it very clear. Two different worlds. The question, and you might know this, historically, India is thousands of years old.

Yeah.

How old is Singapore?

I think it's still a few hundred years, but its independence was in 1965, so not that old as a country. It was again colonized. It was part of Malaysia previously. So it was discovered. I think the history goes, that a prince came across. It has some Indian component to it. So I think if you look at the way, I guess, the diaspora traveled, they went to Malaysia. Some of the Malaysians sort of made their way to Singapore. It was discovered as an island, but yes, as an independent country, it's. It's very, you know, it's only since the 60s, so, so much, so much achievement in such little time. And I think it really needed someone who had clear leadership to take bold steps. And I think that's something I want to touch upon later as well. What kind of bold steps, what kind of risks you need to take to be that leader? But, yeah, sense of it, it's a.

Challenging the topic and what you've brought up. I. When I look at India and I hear individuals say, and I know it's not. It's a tier 1, 2, 3 country, but the term is developed nation or underdeveloped nation or whatever it may be. And I say, yeah, but India has been around for thousands of years. So at what point, if you're developing and you're around for thousands of years, do you qualify? I don't think it's a great definition because the motion in places like Delhi, as compared to Japur or Agra or Mumbai or. Or the tech center, it's very different across the country.

Yeah, it is. And I think that the thing is, even though you have very large urbanized populations, you have, again, lots of towers, lots of business centers. But again, you can't move away from disparity. It is still there. You know, there is somebody who, you know, they're bubbles, they're cocoons that have been created. But there's clearly people who are there to service those that need to be serviced. Whether it's with, you know, whether it's with providing your, you know, your cars or transport or, you know, the grocery delivery, everything that there is clear distinction between those that have and those that have not. And yes, when you start using numbers such as GDP and GMP and you start talking about per capita income, but remember, per capita income is an average. So you have the very, very wealthy on one side and you have those that are extremely poor on the other. And it's an important. And I think when it comes to this part of the world, it's, you know, the characterization is, it's the best of times and the worst of times here, you know, because we've seen this, this huge, enormous growth and yet the inequality is even more stark than it has ever been.

Living in Hong Kong, I saw it. So the. So you then move to Singapore.

Yep.

And take it from there.

Yeah. So as I said again, Singapore's again got all these gleaming glasses, but you've also still got the old lady at the hawker center who sweeps up trays. So I think that ability to make a difference stayed with me. I used that opportunity to support social entrepreneurs. I was approached by an incubator to come and mentor and I thought this is an opportunity for me to give back. I was seeing how technology was playing a role and I thought, oh, I've been invited, I've been given a seat at the table at this sort of, I guess, world changing time to be able to. And why would I not use that opportunity? So I actually helped them with time, skills, personal capital, and I could, because I could see entrepreneurs are very agile in their thinking, they're innovative, they can solve societal problems. And this is my way to work with them to address what I see are global issues. So and I think with that, my role at AVPN is a continuation of that wish to impact the life of one. So the mission of the organization is to move capital towards impact. And that's something that resonates very strongly with me. And when it talks about capital, it talks about human intellectual as financial. So for me, the ability to bring all three together is also meaningful in the work that we've done and we do as an organization.

Okay, got it. And so you had the impact moment you've got this was this job, you know what I'm asking?

Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, we look at extreme poverty, right? If we look at extreme poverty today, it's very different. I mean, if you look at long run evidence, you know, you go back two centuries, only the very sort of wealthy enjoyed living conditions that you would not call extreme poverty today. We've had industrialization, we've had increasing productivity, and the number of people living in extreme poverty has gone down. And I think that really is something that we need to think about positively because there's a positive component to it. But I think what has happened is when we look at and we have all these development goals, back in September 2000, we had the Millennium Development Goals where we are talking about A$25 a day was the definition of extreme poverty. And we feel that some of those were actually met, some of those goals were actually met. We had about a billion people that were lifted out of extreme poverty. And the numbers of people in extreme poverty drop. But there's still about, I would say 600 million or so that are living in extreme poverty. So we have had these 17 sustainable development goals that were launched in 2015. And again, however, eradication of extreme poverty is still very relevant. So what I would say is I work with an Asian network and we need to look at what that $90 today, when we look at extreme poverty and the sort of metrics used for defining extreme poverty, you know, that equates, for example, in the Philippines to 50 pesos. 50 pesos needs to put two meals in a day on the table. It needs to provide shelter, it needs to provide clothing, healthcare and education and as well as access to opportunity that, you know, if you're, you know, if you're in extreme poverty, even if you come out of it, you really don't get. So I think here again, the deadline for achieving this goal has been set at 2030. And for me, when I look at my personal impact moment, I come to a global impact moment because I realized Covid has set us back. We had this deadline for achieving this goal by 2030. The big question is, are we going to achieve it? And clearly, Covid has given us this uphill task. But I also think there's a silver lining behind this cloud. What is brought to the forefront by the pandemic is of course, the level of connectedness we have, the level of interdependence we have. None of us has been immune or inoculated or sitting in a bubble. We've all been touched by this pandemic. And I think that's where I would say we move from what was a very personal moment to what I see as a global impact moment that we've got to today.

So I think I'm going to push a little bit here, only because I'm not completely in alignment with that. The, the belief that we've awoken, that we found these moments. I look at the news and I'm not having lived around the world, my perspective is on the news, or what I hear about comes from all over, is that I'm not seeing people being kinder. I'm not seeing people sharing as much. There's 2,750 billionaires in the world. They're not opening up their wallets more. Is someone in a tier four society, are they willing to say, I'm not going to take my shot, so someone in a tier one or two could get the. The shot? I kind of feel that while we talk about this awakening in this new reset and this new connection, the behaviors from many countries are not indicative of that caringness. Are you seeing something different?

I think, firstly, I think we felt inoculated, we felt insulated and cocooned before because, you know, we'd had sars, we'd had Ebola, we'd had the swine flu, bird flu. It didn't cross the ponds to reach the west. This is where I feel that none of us have been left unaffected. We've got 2 million deaths, you know, and I think, I mean, yes, at a global level, I'm seeing collaboration play a very big role. We've seen, you know, vaccines being developed in the shortest amount of time possible. So we can't afford to, you know, we can talk about not everybody being kind, but we can't afford to ignore what has been achieved as a result of, of the pandemic, which probably would never have been achieved if it wasn't for this catalytic moment.

Yeah, there were two. It took, I think, 211 days for the vaccine to be created. We're still not sure if MRNA is a safe construct. We do now have South. We have the South African virus, we have the uk. They just found some people in the United States with the South African. What they're not so sure it's going to be able to. The vaccine is going to work on. But the challenge that I come across when I think about, yes, there's a lot of positive that have happened, is that if you look around at nations in Tier 4 levels, such as Singapore, such as Hong Kong, such as Japan, they have bought up the Moderna, the Pfizer and the higher or right now higher efficacy drugs. And the countries that are in the less economically valued 1, 2 and 3, they are buying the Chinese version, which I don't know the data, I'm just tossing out what I've heard, it could be as low as 50% efficacy. So there is even a disparity within the differences of gender drug distribution.

So I think to a certain extent I do agree with you. But we have organizations such as GAVI and you know, GAVI has put together this global initiative called covax and that was set up to ensure this rapid and equitable access to COVID 19 vaccines for all countries. They have put arrangements in place to take almost nearly 2 billion doses. If I'm right, they announced in December on behalf of 190 odd countries and the intention is to make sure that there is an equitable distribution. I mean, I guess the proof is in the pudding and we'll see how that delivery starts to happen. I know some of the countries like India actually is managing better outcomes than some of the more developed countries such as the UK and us. The numbers have really dropped there. But within our member base, I mean we set up many of our, we have about 600 members who want to support healthcare and livelihood outcomes in Asia. This is not a problem on distant shores, this is a problem on their doorstep. And we've seen, we've set up actually work with some of our members in setting up pooled funds to support health care and livelihood. They're mobilizing capital, they're collaborating with us. And we in turn will be giving grants to organizations that are involved with the last mile delivery and solving these livelihood challenges that are being kicked out by Covid. So you know, what been obvious to us is you need rapid deployment of capital, but you also need this kind of deliberate leadership to step up. Which is where I think a lot of our members do take that deliberate leadership role. They take risks where others are hesitant. They collaborate, they deploy their capital, they demonstrate courage and they're compassionate. So I would say that it's not, you know, the organized and may not be the entire spectrum of the organizations, but the individuals within the organizations that we're exposed to that we're interacting with. We're seeing that there is a, you know, leadership there with you to solving sort of global issues.

Okay, so what's that? Because you're jumping into the role of capital and collaboration. So do you want to frame that for me the way you look at it.

Well, I think we work across the entire continuum of capital from philanthropy as well as grant giving to ESG. We have 70 odd members that are what we would call classifiers, impact funds and intermediaries that are part of our community. They have as much as $18 billion in assets under management that they invest in the private markets and they deploy their capital. They collaborate and they deploy their capital on three axioms I would call essential empowerment as well as environment. Whether it's and with essentials, they could be looking at clean water, health care, agriculture, food security. With respect to empowerment, they're looking at education and job training. And with respect to environment, they're looking at alternative energy, electric vehicles. So we've seen a number of these fund members rising up to support their portfolio companies and they thought compassionately, they thought creatively. They're focused on putting up their making sure that the portfolio companies look after the employees health first. But the level of collaboration and capital we've seen them deploying is they're going out to their portfolio companies and then they're telling their portfolio companies instead of firing people across the board, which many of the may have had to do if order to survive, they suggested take, you know, senior and top management, take pay cuts and keep salary levels of, you know, people at the entry level secure.

Which is amazing. Which is amazing because if they often, if they took one pay cut of X percent, they keep 20 people or 30 people employed.

Exactly. So you know, everybody makes some sacrifice instead of just, you know, just getting rid of a few people. You know, everybody's made, but you made your business viable, you've collaborated in a way that's meaningful when you talk.

So it sounds a pretty picture. One of the challenges with impact is roi. So if we separate out Covid from impact and I know that we're in the time of both at this moment, there's a challenge because the ROI on an investment fund sometimes doesn't meet those expectations that you might have gotten in a. I hate to use these words, I'm trying to find the right word, but traditional, it's not the word. A traditional investment where you're really looking for that growth, how are they tackling or how are you tackling that with them?

So I think a lot of them are set up with view to making sure they get social and environmental impact. So that's the intent with which these funds are set up. So it's not the intentionality is there as a given before these. And I think what we are also starting to witness is that not all of them need to compromise on financial returns in order to achieve the goals. The roi. And the ROI is also broader. They're looking at social impact being as a part of that return on investment is not just financial alone, but social becomes a component of that return on investment. So we're seeing, we're seeing when these funds are set up, it's with that component of ROI being in place as well. And we're seeing, you know, edtech companies, such as one that Omidyar Network invested in and exited, you know, the exit was a $300 million exit. Now, that's not numbers one thinks about. When you look at social impact, you know, that you don't see. And you know, there's another one which has now got to a scale where it's just completely, you know, it's a unicorn, such as Baiju. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. It's an Indian edtech and it's.

Yes, yep, I've heard about it.

So it's worth it. Ten point. I think the last valuation was about $10.2 billion. And it received its original funding from a family office in Belgium, Chan Zuckerberg initiative. And it's subsequently become the unicorn that it has as a result of. And again, so when you think about traditional roi, clearly there's financial. And it's all about the addressable market size as well. And here where I think it's important is technology and its ability to create that exponential impact.

So when you. And this is something might not be in your firm, just you in general and your knowledge of this, is there a way or are they utilizing a different measurement device to be able to raise money and be able to articulate to the market that their fund has a different measurement tool? So here we got a unicorn and a $300 million exit. But they're not all like that. When am I trying to get to the right question? If I came back and said we didn't get as high on the market returns that other companies did, where are they posting that? They've got these social constructs that are value. I don't know if I said that. Well, I went all over the place. Do you know what I'm asking?

Yeah. So from what I understand, David, you want to know how are they reporting their social impact? Am I right?

Well, yeah, we can see an income statement and balance sheet. The capital markets can look at what's happening on Wall Street. There is no column on the side that says we didn't do as well as this, because we did this, you'd really have to dig. And if someone was just investing, they wouldn't see that. How are they getting that message out at the same time?

So I think in terms of their investor base, the mandate they had was to invest with a social impact. So they actually are reporting on that social impact at the investee company level as well as at the fund level. So at the investee company level, they're using social metrics such as IRIS plus to capture that data. They're also using the impact management's five dimensions of impact to look at what is the problem we're addressing, who will benefit, how big is the impact, what is our contribution to the impact, how do we address the risks? And that is part of the entire process from due diligence stage and it's embedded in their investment process and they use that for future monitoring as well. And when we look at these five dimensions, they want to look at how did the stakeholders experience the impact? What was the degree of change they experienced? And they're monitoring this. How did they, how long did they experience the outcome? They want to look at their own contribution that resulted in outcomes. Could it have happened without their intervention? Those are things that they're looking at and you know, outcomes could be both negative as well as positive. And again, they want to make sure that that's taken into consideration right from the investment decision level to the reporting level. And so it's embedded into the business that they have that there is social and environmental impact and it's reported up the chain to their investors who invested knowing fully well that these entities have been set up with you to getting both and reporting on that and looking at the longer term outcomes, not just the short term sort of annual profits.

So when you add the two term, you had a role of capital and collaboration.

Yeah.

How were the collaboration side, how are you tying that together with the capital? What's your take on. You gave two words, so I'm asking about the differences.

So from our side, what we're seeing in terms of collaboration is we're seeing number of funds coming together to invest in these startups. They all coming with a view to ensuring that they get these outcomes that they have in mind in terms of what they want to achieve. So we are seeing collaboration in that respect. We also see collaboration across this continuum of capital that I mentioned and whether it's with respect to philanthropy, whether it's with respect to the standard sort of grant funding, whether it's respect to the funds themselves. Or on the sustainable finance side as well. And we're seeing, you know, again, technology, as I said, is a big component where a lot of our funds invest. And we've seen technology enabled solutions where you know, they would have been sort of stymied otherwise. You know, we've seen that this in sectors such as education, we've seen this. I'll give you an example of a healthcare company. For example, we have a portfolio company of one of our funds called hello Doc and it's changed how healthcare is delivered and will continue to be delivered in a post Covid environment. So it's a tech platform with the mission to simplify access to healthcare by millions of patients. And this is in Indonesia with view to them having access to licensed doctors, insurance labs and pharmacies in one simple sort of application, mobile application. And we've seen them run a pilot with another member of ours, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in supporting child and maternal health, working with midwives on the ground to improve healthcare coordination, administer lifesaving interventions. So here we've seen a foundation come together and we've seen a, a tech platform come together and we've seen a VC fund come together or collaborate with view to getting the right outcomes for sort of maternal health and child care on the ground in Indonesia.

Was it one of. Were you involved in that?

No. So it is a member of ours. But in terms of the actual coordination of this, no, we, we bring their stories to our platforms, we discuss them, we facilitate some of those collaborations where possible. So this is where our pooled funds will have a role to play. But on this particular instance we weren't involved with the collaboration. But there are.

That's okay, I was just. The only reason is you can ask deeper questions if you were at the table as compare if you heard about the story. Just a matter of. That's why I asked that what are you doing differently? What are you seeing differently in the marketplace or what are you doing differently when it comes to collaboration? That makes these deals go faster, makes the investment stronger, makes the outcome better.

So I think when it comes to sort of the collaborative part of it, we ourselves have something called a deal share platform. We have about 400 deals that are listed on there that have been invested by our members. So we showcase and by deals, I mean they're not, they're also social purpose organizations. So we have the opportunity to showcase these, to bring potential investors to look at these opportunities. And because they've already been invested or grant funded by another one of our members, they've kind of been partly endorsed. We get involved in sort of connecting the two together. We are obviously not placing agents. We are not financial advisors. We can only take the conversation so far. The actual outcome is to just connect the dots for them. And for that we share a lot of knowledge and insights. We bring these, these connections together. But beyond that, you know, the actual transaction and how that transaction structured, we don't get involved with that component. And we do we simply because, you know, we're not licensed to do that.

That's right. So, so you're looking, let me get this straight. Are you looking for the deal flow, meaning the business venture that you'd like to be involved in? And then you go to your member group and you're saying this is the opportunity. Then you let them take the structuring and everything else from there.

So our members often bring us the steel flow because they themselves have invested or, or given grant funding to, and they're looking for others to collaborate with them to support the entity. So we therefore list them on our platform, showcase them to others within our membership base such that there is an ability to form an alliance with the already existing investor and support the entity in whatever way. It doesn't have to be financial capital. It could be, you know, as I said, skill sets. It could be the knowledge piece. So it's, it's, you know, all three, you know, the human, the intellectual, the financial. That's what we do. We bring it. And you know, for example, we on, on the, the entities that we have listed, we have another member ey that recognizes some of these social purpose organizations are not investment ready. So they bring their mentoring hat to the table and help support these social businesses to get investment ready. So they bring that kind of collaborative thinking to support the social entrepreneurs. So we go ahead.

No, go ahead.

So I'm saying, so what we do is we form this sort of, which is our role. We form this network and we're in Asia, the largest network of its kind, bringing these sort of unlikely, I would say, allegiances and allies together because, you know, it could be a corporate on one side and it could be a foundation on the other, a family foundation. It could be a, you know, a impact fund. It could be somebody looking at how do I do csr? So it's, it's an unlikely marriage that wouldn't have been formed if it wasn't for the amount of connecting that we do for them.

How old is AVPN?

So we're about nine years old. We're just coming up to our 10th.

Anniversary and was it its original intention to do this?

So we primarily started off focused, very focused on philanthropy and venture philanthropy. We have now subsequently seen that in order to work with our and to grow this membership brace and to bring this level of collaboration together, we need to work across that entire continuum of capital. We need to go where our members are. And again, if we work in silos, it's very difficult to get get the levels of capital you need to solve the kind of challenges that you have in Asia. So we therefore now have conversations across that entire continuum, both from philanthropy, as I said, to our corporate members who are focused on esg.

So you move from one business model to a different business model that is more of a network amplifier where you started off being able to do deals but found that deal flow was coming from them. So you could bring their deal flow onto the table and then connect other investment vehicles, whatever type it is, to this project and empower it to grow. So, so is that kind of it you transition from one model to the one of being a connector.

So I think we have numerous offerings. So this component of our dealshare platform is one component of it. We also do sort of have a knowledge and insights piece we won. We're now running different fellowships to educate and inform. We have, as I said, we started off with focus on foundations and philanthropy and then on venture philanthropy. But we realized that in order to get the outcomes, you need various forms of pools of capital. So now we have conversations with everybody and we are primarily grant funded. So we have, we look at for example, different themes that resonate with our members. For example, climate is a theme that resonates strongly. So we've launched a climate action platform. Gender is a theme that resonates strongly. So we launched the Asian Gender Network where we brought across female philanthropists who are focused on gender, girl and women causes, 40 such philanthropists who are again, we're funded for that by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The fellowships that we've launched where we're bringing in again, foundations, family offices, corporates who want to learn about impact investing. And we partnered up with the Ford foundation to do that. So we have different offerings and we go to where our membership, what they ask of us is and it's beyond, it's often more than just the connection, often more, more than just access to the deal flow. They also want to demonstrate their thought leadership. They also want to talk about the work that they're doing. So we host a number of events. We have three sort of, I would say signature events. We have a annual conference, we have one event in India, we have one event in Southeast Asia so that we can also bring members across Asia together to meet each other and learn from each other as well.

So I think we can go to deliberate leadership. What does that mean in your mind?

Yeah, so as I said, this for us means those that have demonstrated courage, they've taken risks, they collaborated, they deployed that human intellectual, financial capital. And again, going back to Covid, again we've seen, for example, another fund of ours. Look at, they launched a Thrive Fund which was, it's an entity called Chirate ventures, it's a 700 million fund in India and it launched a Thrive fund to give economic release to low income gig workers that were associated with its portfolio companies, those for whom the income had been adversely affected. So for us, we've seen time and again our members step up and show leadership where others have been missing in that space. We've also looked at how we can work with our private wealth holders, which is again, a large number of them. If you think about Asia, you have, it's one of those places where you have a huge amount of 60% of the world's population lives here. You have probably the highest growth rate in the number of high net worth individuals in the world as well. With the Asian billionaire population looking at sort of becoming possibly one third of the world's total by 2023. So again, we have this group of people who are sitting in Singapore because Singapore is a private banking and a private wealth hub. They're looking to, and this is, you know, a robust regulatory and political environment as well. Many of that wealth holder community is again setting up their family offices in Singapore. Many of them want to invest their wealth with an impact lens and want to learn and engage with this social and environmental community. Again, we've seen with them that many of these families have stepped forward in terms of themes again that resonate with them, whether it's climate action, whether it's education, whether it's gender equality and equity. And they're mobilizing domestic capital for domestic solutions. Again, we've seen, you know, a member of ours, it's called Chen Yat Sen, it's actually out of Hong Kong. I don't know if you know, James. So James Chen has launch clearly and he recognizes that he needs to bring, you know, he needs to catalyze investment in innovation because he recognizes that poor eyesight, you know, it's impeding progress when it comes to the SDGs. It stops people from getting an education, getting involved with productive employment. So again, there are other members who've partnered up with him to help him with this clearly campaign. We have another member in our base called Esselor, which is a. I guess it's, you know, they have optical lenses. They've launched a campaign to look at how they generate employment, but you know, sort of the small kiosk of employment in this space. They train women to be opticians, to be able to analyze. And again, there's an opportunity for clearly and Essalor to partner up and collaborate and deal with this issue of poor eyesight. So you wouldn't have someone sitting in Hong Kong and a global organization such as ESSILOR look at opportunities to collaborate. So we're bringing the two together to see how things could be done differently.

Must be interesting sitting at the table. What's the. When you look at deliberate leadership in the areas that you're focused on, what specific characteristics are you identifying that makes them stronger than others?

I think it's the level of compassion, right? Firstly, it's taking risks and I think secondly, it's the level of compassion. They're creative, they iterate based on how the circumstances within which they find themselves. We are seeing organizations that are saying, okay, I need to set up, go where others are not going. For example, we have an entity called Circulate Capital. It realizes that their role is the first investment fund they've set up called Circulate Capital Ocean Fund, which is dedicated to preventing ocean plastic. So they realize that nobody else is focused on this in quite the same way because bandwidth and focus has been on solving issues related to the pandemic. During this period they set up a 35 million fund and USAID came in with providing a guarantee for 50% of their loans. So again, it went into a space where during. They took that stance during the pandemic where others would not. They felt that, yes, if the health and economic crisis has taught us anything, we need to future proof our local supply chains and economies and critical infrastructure like waste and recycling goes hand in hand with protecting the health as well as the livelihoods of communities. So again, we've seen organizations do unusual things. This capital could easily have been used for solving other issues. But they didn't take a step back and said, oh, this is not topical, this is not current, this is not where dollars should be spent at this particular point in time. But again, as I said, they took that stance of deliberate leadership. They focused on launching this product and they went ahead. Not only did they Went ahead, they invested in two businesses looking at plastic recycling in India and in Indonesia. They took 6 million of their 35 million and they already deployed it during this period.

So just another data point. Participation in the, from the family or the family office, which to me often are very different from families have individuals, family offices tend to be from banking or some type of management style to handle the funds participation wise. Is there any gender, country distinctions that you're finding across the board? And those were two examples. Are you seeing anything? Are you seeing more women, more men? Are you seeing more Chinese? Are you seeing more Japanese? Are you seeing some types of trends?

So what we've seen with, when it comes to the private wealth side of things is that we have, you know, Singapore is a hub, right? So the money comes from all parts of Asia and it parks itself here. And some of that money still continues, continues to sit within the family business. Other components that, you know, the liquid side of things structures itself as a family office. And sometimes the family business sits underneath that family office and sometimes it sits distinct from it. We are definitely seeing that especially with this enormous transfer of wealth that is happening from the first generation of wealth generators to the, the second generations. That generation is very focused on looking at doing things better. They want to look at things with a responsible lens. So we are seeing that transfer of wealth is meaning that not only are they looking at the business that they're involved with, but also how could that business be done better for the future? And as you can imagine, a lot of the funding that's it's in some of these family offices is coming from, you know, extractive industries. Palm oil.

Right, exactly. That's. I thought about it a while ago. I didn't know if I wanted to get into it at the moment. But yes, these are, they're almost for individuals who've not lived in Asia. It's very difficult to understand that it's not a race to ipo. It is, we build a business and we're going to have that business for the next hundred years. It's a long term, long commitment to business development. And some of these entities could have 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 100, 200 different entities that are part of that family. Are they going in and rehashing, redoing, eliminating, reconstructing, redefining these entities.

So I think the next generation, when it's taking over, wants to learn, wants to learn how to do things differently. They want to embed impact in the way, in the business itself, the core of the business. So we're seeing that mindset coming to the table once you get that mindset to the table. And it has the ability to influence with the roles, in essence, the whole the purse strings, right? So they can move in a direction. They can move the business in a direction that it does embed impact. It does look at impact. And it goes beyond pure philanthropy. It goes into how they do manufacture their entire portfolio. They look at responsible investing being across the entire. And it's not just when they're looking at their liquid. For example, if they're looking at their liquid portfolio, it's not just, you know, using exclusionary policies or we're not going to invest in tobacco and we're not going to invest in oil and gas. But they're looking at it from what could we do differently? And some of them do deploy capital into the types of entities such as impact funds because they see that there's opportunity to get a financial as well as social return. They're looking at, you know, even private equity. That's, you know, we've heard organizations such as, you know, a member of ours, KKR has set up a $1.3 billion social impact fund within the larger umbrella because they're seeing a demand from. So we're seeing family offices look at components of their portfolio to see what could they do differently, what could they invest in that we're. They do get a social. And so and it's an education journey. So our role as network is to give them that education so that they know that these opportunities do exist, they can deploy. Because sometimes it's like, oh, but I didn't even know that was possible. And we take. And how. And again, how do you embed impact into your portfolio? Is a conversation we can have. We can, can take them through that journey. So that's where we as a network have a role to play and are doing so very closely with the family offices. So a number of them have become our members. And that group, that segment is continually growing. We've seen that sort of interest in our fellowships. We launched one for the next generation and so over subscribed that we're having to say, okay, we'll do the first one and we'll then have you perhaps for the keep you behind for the second cohort. Because there's such, you know, these themes are so strong and they resonate so strongly with them.

So I think. How about the next one you had was Tech as enabler? I know we touched on it. What did you mean when you had given Tech as an enabler so we.

So I think we spoke about health care. I mean, I think clearly the hello Doc was a good example of that. And you know, you have a mobile platform, it connects patients with doctors. But we've also seen it play a pivotal role when it comes to financial inclusion. You know, 70% of the adults in Southeast Asia and South Asia more in Southeast Asia than South Asia because South Asia now has Aadhaar Southeast Asia, they're unbanked or underbanked. Technology obviously presents a significant opportunity when it comes to financial inclusion. And financial inclusion in turn drives impact. The issue has often been this lack of strong infrastructure in Asian countries. So I think this is where sort of investment into smart technology could help solve some of these infrastructural issues. But the emergence of these smartphones and digital technology has enabled financial technology firms to infiltrate the lending market. And you need access to credit, which is often the reason why they say there's a lack of access to opportunity. And what we've seen is this fintech market has harnessed on four key trends which has led to its growth. Obviously these companies are able to process information a lot more quickly and a lot lower cost. You've got AI and blockchain, can unlock sort of alternative data points and they help determine a credit worthiness of a borrower and can also automate processes so obviously giving a lower cost of borrowing. We've also got technology platforms allowing us to fund or donate to causes, you know, you know, of people's student loans being paid off through GoFundMe. Or a particular company is looking at generating, you know, a particular company or individuals looking for money. Again, you can generate returns through sort of investing in them through marketplace lending or even through peer to peer lending. We've also seen these platforms being able to crowd in debt capital from private investors. Again, this increases that pool back to lowering the cost of lending available to this segment of the population. Clearly these fintech entities have on the ground presence, they have local market penetration. So what we're seeing is, you know, people who perhaps have unstable monthly income, they need money for hospital bills or small businesses looking to expand can access, you know, can access these plans platforms which they again previously would not have had access to this credit, would not have had access to this funding. The other example I would give of technology is we had an initiative led by our partners Rockefeller foundation and MasterCard, which is MasterCard center for Inclusive Growth. They created an entity called data.org it's a pool fund. And what it does, it builds on data Science for social impact. And this was particularly timely because people, during the pandemic, people were looking for reliable and accessible information to make decisions. We saw that technology enabled that. So and what we've also realized is, you know, this tectonic shift that has happened during COVID is unlikely to be reversed. You know, you've got certain patterns of consumption being created, whether it, you know, we've seen the rise of E commerce right down to the corner store, the mom and pop shop, some deliveries happening. So they've also been actually been beneficiaries in some ways of these digital platforms. And I think this is going to be continued to be built upon in a post pandemic world. But what's going to be key is driving investment into to these tech spaces in Asia. So I think there's definitely scope for technology to continue to play a role in a post pandemic environment.

And I think that the tech as an enabler, I actually you gave me a different answer than I was expecting. The platforms that are being developed for the interconnectivity, the networking between organizations I think is possibly even more impactful than the actual texts that are being delivered on the last mile in the edge side of it. Because you're allowing these organizations to be able to find out what's happening quickly, be able to access capital quickly, deploy it quickly and speed up the network effect that happens by having multiple entities getting capital at the same time.

I mean we've had organizations do due diligences online, we've had funds raise capital online where you've been restricted by travel. If it wasn't for that enablement that to technology provided, I mean you and I are having this conversation courtesy of technology. So I think definitely the world has changed and we've adopted, we've been forced to adopt technology faster. I hadn't even, I think I've used zoom about three times or four times before the last year. So you know, now almost every call is a zoom call.

So clearly on my end, which is very different, I had been on Skype, which was the old term presume I was on Skype every single day for 10 years, at least twice a day, right. And so when this pandemic came about and everybody's talking about the new normal and connecting and this is unbelievable, I'm thinking, oh my God, I've been doing this every day. This is not new to me. And yes, it was new to the rest of the world, but it wasn't new. If you were doing global business and you were always connecting to people around the world for one reason or another. The.

Okay, I also want to, I want to move away from the topic of technology and private. Well, I also want to focus on another burning issue that affects us all, which is climate change. You know, how are we thinking about this? You know, as far as we're concerned, this is an existentialist challenge and it's a super wicked problem. It's been a heated topic of debate for nearly three decades. You know, there was a meeting in Rio in 1992 that kind of started this conversation. If only we'd done something about it then and taken some concrete actions. So we've seen, you know, the global scene, investments in sustainability and ESG reach record levels. I think we just had Larry Fink's annual letter to CEOs which he normally sends around this week, which is Davos week. He stated that From January to November 2020, you know, 288 billion had been invested in sustainable assets. This is twice as much as what was done the previous year. There was also HBR article last weekend talking about the same thing and saying the reason for this increase is a function of growing awareness amongst companies, investors, shareholders. But they also recognize in order to remain viable, businesses need to think about and manage their impact on the planet in different ways. So we are seeing this as an inflection point. We're seeing our corporate members engage on issues of environmental sustainability and not just from a risk mitigation point of view, but with intentionality and again, a focus on long term outcomes.

We've seen.

Yeah, Yeah.

I have 2.2 questions, so I'll start with the first one. Have you read the article worried about Earth's future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp.

I haven't read the article, but I can pretty much understand the gist of.

Where I was on the I. I spoke with Daniel today. He's one of the several authors on the document. A select group of scientists decided not to look at the individual reports, but put all of 150of the top reports together and make one aggregate analysis. And in every single case, it's far worse than anything that's being reported. Every single case, it is far worse than being reported.

I'm sure you're right.

I didn't want to bring it up now, but you just brought it up when you got to climate change and how big it is and how far it's going. So it's the timing. Is that so I'll jump to my other point and then we could talk about it is that we're giving people access to capital. We're giving people the ability to be able to buy what they need. We're raising them up from Tier 1 to Tier 2 to Tier 3 to Tier 4, bringing them out of poverty. There's a big push of or an understanding. And you might have known this, the Maslow's hierarchy and needs. I don't know if you know that Maslow didn't believe in it.

Oh, that I didn't know.

Yeah. This is the story he created. He wrote a page paper and an American, sorry to blame or put it on an American. American took it and created a triangle. And he started selling and promoting this. And fairly soon Maslow was getting offers to speak and do work. And while he didn't believe in it, he did it for the money. And at the near the end of his life he wrote a paper that more or less contradicted that. That's not where he expected it to go. There was, People have said he had commented on this because it's fundamentally flawed in the fact that I'm assuming you would know individuals that are at the top, which is, what do you call it, Actualization. They're self actualized.

Right.

And yet they are poor. Can you be self actualized and own nothing?

I think you have some countries, you know, you have Bhutan, for example, the happiness index. And you know, could you argue someone who's a tribal, who's not, you know, experienced urbanization, not seen the products, the array of consumer products. Is he happy and satisfied?

Yeah, it makes sense, doesn't it, that you don't need to be, you don't need to move up the pyramid to be self actualized. You could be self actualized at any level.

Right.

And so the challenge that you've talked about a lot so far and there's more, a lot more we'll go over. We're hitting climate change, which is a hot button. We're talking about improving the lives of individuals, we're talking about being sustainable. And at the same time you were like pushing buttons as you were saying it. You were saying we're giving them access to capital, we're giving them access to platforms, they're being able to buy the things they need. The rise of E commerce to get what they'd like. Well, that ends up producing more waste, more CO2 in the atmosphere. It's deforestation. It is all sorts of other narratives that could be drawn to that. Do you feel that there's a disconnect at all?

Well, I think what we're finding is that, you know, for example, the circulate capital example that I gave you when it looked at plastic recycling and it got sort of that 50% de risking of its loans from the USAID. The funders behind it were organizations such as PepsiCo, such as Coca Cola, Dunon, PNG, Unilever. They're creating these fast moving consumer goods and they also see within themselves what could they do differently. Obviously you've got at some level some sort of mandates being pushed through as well by policies and regulations from organizations like the monetary authority trying to keep us within two degrees. But it has to go to the very core of the business. If you're making net zero or carbon neutrality sort of commitments. And many Asian countries are, you know, Japan and Korea's committed to 2050, China's committed to 2060, India's got similar ambitions. How are you going to achieve them if the corporates within your countries are not stepping up? So I think it has to come from within the corporates as well. But we're also seeing, you know, top down imposing of policy and regulations because there's no way you can keep to this net zero carbon neutrality if you don't have a mechanism in place by the larger corporates to ensure whatever they're producing is. Yes, we are resource constrained. And I know you worked on what we could be doing. You know, your other podcast series sort of looks at what should be doing differently. But I think we have to look at what we are producing, how we're using our resources. And you know, those of us who can manage with less don't need, you know, wardrobes and wardrobes of clothes and shoes and bags and for women and then from, you know, products. We don't need to be consuming so many products. I think there's consumer awareness and then there's business awareness. I think that there's clearly people are realizing this is a sort of more than a single pandemic.

I'm going to push you because you're talking in circles and I want your opinion of the speak and maybe it's being part of the organization, but it's more. I didn't hear you say yes, it's working, yes, it's not. Or there's a conflict. We are generating. We are as a human species generating more garbage and it is not stopping. The numbers are coming back that we are not producing less. We're producing more even though we're staying in our homes. The electric, because of the pandemic, the electrical usage is not far off. What it was before because now you're, you're heating utilizing your home. Instead of turning down the heat or the ac, your, the air con, you are using more of it because you're now in a larger space where before you were in a shared space. I have 400 square meter, 4,000 square feet and I'm here all day. So therefore I've got to take care of and turn the heat on or the aircon on just for the few people who exist in this structure and we do eat. You get cheese and it's wrapped in plastic. Toothpaste is not considered a single use plastic because you use it multiple times but it's still a single use. I mean when it goes in the garbage it still looks the same as the others and we're not, we're not winning. So when you hit the climate change and you say 2050 and you choose 2060 is your opinion this and you don't have to say for a vpn, I mean just you is that too late? Are we really just heading into a firestorm? You're in Singapore, you're in an island.

I think if we don't do something immediately, I would agree with you that this is an urgent issue. It has as much urgency as the pandemic and if we don't do something about it, we're going to find ourselves with no legacy. I don't know what it's going to look like for the next generation or the generation after. So I think awareness building awareness is where networks like us have a role to play. We can, you know, consumer awareness, what we're consuming, quantums we're consuming and corporates, when they're selling us these products, I know the end goal is to make profits, but they're looking at stakeholder capitalism. They need to look at how they're engaging with their communities. What could they be doing better? What could they be doing with respect to the products that they produce? Do we need as wide a range of products?

Well and the answer to for them is yes and to the answer for the for climate change is no.

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah.

What's your from my personal opinion, I think we've got miles to go before we sleep. So there is a long, long way to go. We're chipping away at it, but they seem like impossible goals right now.

Thank you, I appreciate that. Honesty or not. Honesty is the forthrightness, the story. And I don't know if I shared it on Robert Rubenstein's podcast, but I have a friend in Xiaoman for those who don't know. Xiaomin is in China. And I had this conversation, her name is Lisa. And we were talking about some issue, just fun, what was going on Hong Kong and China. And she said, can you call back in an hour? I'm taking a shower. And I said, an hour? I mean, can we like 20 minutes? She said, well, I take a 20 to 50 minute shower every day. And I can't call it western, I'm going to call it fourth tier. Someone who knows about these things because I'm in Hong Kong at the time. And I said, well, what about climate change and water? And she gave me a slap on the face that I will remember for the rest of my life. And it was a very interesting one. She said, you have lived this way your whole life. Don't go trying to tell us that we now can't have it. I want my shower and that's what I do. And I will take my showers now. When I got off the phone, I mean, she wasn't mean about it, but she was very stern. And when I was done and I hung up the phone, I said, oh no, we're fighting the wrong battle. And the battle was that movies, the, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, all of this is propagandistic material which demonstrated to nations that were underserved, Tier one, tier two, tier three, that one day you could have this, one day you could live this way, one day you could have a big house, you could have a big car, you could travel the world, you could do all these things. And if you look at Korea in the past 30 years, you look at Bangladesh as its, its changes and Indonesia, you look at what's happening across the Asian region. They want what used to be considered novel and new and standard in Europe, the United States and other countries. So it was really an eye opener that this was propaganda. We were selling to this great group and they are not going to say they'll take it that easily. And right after that, must have been a month later, I read an article that China had built a 50 year dump. And the article said they filled the 50 year dump in 25 years. So that's why I'm trying to press here a little bit about some of the answers that you're giving them, trying to be courteous about it. But are we doing, when you talk about deliberate leadership, are we enabling the right things that make that change? Are we, we're on the private wealth. Is private wealth really moving the needle or is it moving it a little bit? And we're Taking it as grandiose. I know I just gave you a ton.

Yeah, yeah. No, so it's an interesting example. I mean, the fact of the matter is I had an impact moment and I think a lot of others through the course of their life go through those impact moments. I wonder if, you know, how do we make sure those impact moments happen earlier such that we're not, not all heading towards a precipice and going to go off the cliff on the other side. And there is a fear that that's going to happen. And I think all we can do is obviously modify our own individual behavior in how we consume and how we look at our own footprint, but also educate, inform and, you know, at the end of the day, you hope that, you know, the world's not so inured to what it sees around itself. And I think again, part of that education is that media consumption. You know, how you saw what the, what wealth was meant to look like, what happiness was meant to look like. And you know, we can have much more sort of philosophical deep discussions around this and we are seeing some of those philosophical discussions happening, but it's only to the select few. There needs to be much more sort of media promotion, mass marketing of the thinking that you don't need to have everything in terms of materialistic goods to be happy, to be content. So I think that shift can only happen through an education process and we can start, we hope we do start earlier, you know, with children through the schooling process and we are hoping we do the same education when it comes to those that are deploying the capital. We do hope the same happens with respect to corporates that are selling us these goods, that they incorporate it and look at the very core of the business.

And yet we see blockchain, which is high energy intensive, being used. And the inventor of Siri, one of the inventors of Siri did some data analytics on the energy consumption used to post a single photograph on Facebook. And he went through the miles or kilometers of cable, looked at the server, looked at the infrastructure, not storage, just to post one image. And one image posted on any of these social media platforms is equivalent to three 20 watt light bulbs being run for an hour each photograph. So I'm the reason I'm asking the questions is to drive is I'm trying to figure out in my mind I told I shared with you the that these interviews so I learned something is I'm trying to figure out what is that lever project, Moon Hut foundation, which is the other podcast which is tackling this I believe we'll solve it. Maybe not in the way that most individuals think we will, but when you have the next one you have is private wealth and moving the needle. Give me a sense of not what is data, what you're feeling, what you're getting. Getting is how fast. Give me something that I can get a better metric. And I know there's probably not one built, but you could tell it to me in multiple terms.

I would say, David, it's difficult to say. Definitely there isn't a metric out there that's going to achieve the issue and address the issue of climate change quickly in the way that we need it to be addressed within. In fact, you know, it would be lovely if it was like the MDGs where, you know, you looked at extreme poverty and in fact you met some of the goals five years earlier than you had originally planned and you came up with a new set of goals. I don't think anything like that is going to happen so quickly. I would love to see a metric that, that can capture that. And you know, and all we can hope is this sort of government support, political will and policies and regulations help us, you know, if it's in countries like Singapore, you know, where the mas, which is the monetary authority, is taking sustainability seriously. We're hoping their initiatives to address climate change ensure compliance at the organization, organization level. So I'm not, I'm not saying that private wealth is only, you know, private wealth is moving the needle in terms of how it's looking at investing. But it's, it's going to be political will, it's going to be government intervention is going to be, it'll, in some countries it needs to come from top down. You know, the multinationals may well be looking at incorporating this in the core of the business business, but in some cases where, you know, where as I said, this part of the world, a lot of its extractive industries, it may well be, you know, the Philippines saying that we need to have TCFDs, we.

Need to report along what are TCFDs.

So they're the climate finance disclosures. So they're also looking at what's happening. So this TCFT is the Task Force on Climate Finance related, you know, climate Related Finance disclosures. So I think it's that kind of thinking that we need from governments to say, okay, these are the metrics, this is what you need to do to capture it. This is how you report risk. But also start, you know, being, I guess, being transparent in what you're doing and you know, it's not greenwashing, it's actually more than a reporting metric that you're actually thinking about climate in your very business. And that in itself I think we're seeing translate into investors wanting to invest in those entities. That's why we're seeing this mobilization of capital. The kinds of capital we're seeing in the, you know, as I said, we've had this twice the amount of funding going in into sustainable assets is because there is an upside. They do recognize that sustainability within the business is going to get the outcomes, the positive outcomes.

You can hit one of the 17 SDGs but still be environmentally damaging. You can hit F5 of the SDGs and still do damage in another respect. So it's. I think the challenge is that the SDG is becoming a marketing tool but it's not always an all encompassing that the organization and I agree with you in many respects the organization is not looking upstream as much. Some of the bigger companies are, but a lot of them can't. The small or mid sized companies, the SMEs can't as easily what's happening upstream to get them what they need and what's happening downstream to what they create on the other end. They're not always monitoring that and understanding that is not easy to do. So jumping a little bit to kind of sidestepping here, you brought up government. If you were to be more forceful with government or more precise in your weapon that you use your tool in your arsenal, what would you do with government to make them do this faster? Because you're talking 2050 and 2060 and the region that you're in, region I was in had a lot more hurricanes or typhoons than they've had in the past. Macau was hit twice in two years. The Greater Bay used to be the Pearl River Delta. It's still land mass that's under a certain level. How would you address it differently?

As I said, this is where if you've got targets for 2050, obviously you're not going to get to 2050 and try and achieve them. You have to have milestones in place as to how you're getting there. Right. So I think there needs to be, there is going to be definitely policies. This is as I said, for example in Singapore we had the MAs step in and say look, we're going to take sustainability seriously. We're going to look at the Singapore Stock Exchange and we're going to see how compliance how is reported with respect to esg. We're then going to dig a bit further and look at sustainability, look at climate as an issue. And the same thing is true for Hong Kong. They set up a green finance association with sort of 80 entities that were members of this green finance. And they looked at specifically, you know, you mentioned the typhoons. They looked at how could we get involved. And look at conservation finance and disaster insurance products. Yes, that, you know, it doesn't specifically look at addressing the typhoon issue, but it's looking at something that's ancillary that because you have to speak to the financial institutions in a way that kind of also makes sense from a business perspective. So they set up this green finance association with you to looking at disasters and typhoons being a critical disaster that comes to Hong Kong, comes to Macau.

You can't see me laughing here. And I am, because if you walk into the government buildings, their aircon is set at 11 degrees Celsius. I mean, it is freezing. Even if they just had. I've been in meetings in Asia where in the summer people are wearing jackets, it's so cold.

So again, it's an education, right? So we have to go through this education process. And again, the government itself, if it is making this commitment, then whatever it's imposing on others needs to be self imposed as well as to how it's looking at its own footprint, climate footprint, looking at its own greenhouse gas emissions, to see what they're doing as an organization, what they're doing in terms and going beyond policy. I think, yeah, you raise a valid point then perhaps governments should be equally as accountable and be looking at their own enterprises and seeing what they should be doing to make sure that whatever they're imposing externally as regulations is also relevant internally.

I'm going in circles a little bit here. I'm trying to figure out how do you get them to understand this? Because yes, they should be be. You're probably more familiar with all the accords that have been written, with all these metrics that have been set, the deadlines that were supposed to be met, the 24 countries get together to achieve. Most cases, nothing happens. They don't hit any of those targets. Do you feel, in your opinion that the targets are being met.

As far as, you know, in terms of access to information?

Well, hitting these, you know, 2050, 2060, whatever metric, whatever category you'd like to have, are we really making progress overall?

I think the progress is definitely slow. And these commitments, at least in Asia, have been more recent. You know, I think it was 2020 when, I think just a few months ago, in fact, is when Korea and Japan made their commitments, so it's still early days.

So that's. This is just last year. I didn't realize it was that current.

Yeah, it is. It is. So same thing for Hong Kong. They also committed to 2050, so. And India's, you know, I think China said 2060. So it's very, very, very, very recent commitments. I think October or November is when we're talking about these commitments. So it's very early days.

Wow, I didn't realize that. Okay.

Yes. So we are, you know, and it's great. I mean, we had us falling behind. It's great to see it rejoin the Paris Accord. So hopefully it'll provide some leadership in this arena as well. You know, often one follows what the US Is doing in this space as well. So I think it'll definitely be leadership that we in Asia can learn from as well. And what the.

Why do you. Why do you say the US and this is a cultural definition to my sense. Why the US.

I think we look at the States as being a sort of. The world has always looked at the States as being the world's policeman, the world's leader, and it's been for the longest time been thought as the superpower. So we, everybody within Asia has for a while looked up to learning from what. And when we think of the west, we actually look, truly look westward at North America. So I think we are looking at them sort of taking charge, leading the way, and us being able to learn from that. So having it drop out of the Paris Accord was actually, it was great to see Japan and Korea commit, despite the fact that the US Was not part of it. Clearly there was decisions being made that said, who knows what the next leadership will look like? But we need to take action for ourselves. We need to make these commitments because this is for the good of our countries. This is decisions we need to make for ourselves. So. But people have. I mean, this is the fact of the matter that people have looked at the stakes for leadership.

It's a. I don't know how. This is part of the challenge that I'm working on in my head. And I'm glad that I've had. I got stuck here from COVID and that's where I've been since November 25th of 2019, and not stuck in the country, but I came home and wasn't able to leave again. And the challenge that. One of the beautiful things that I loved about being in Asia is that I would go into a meeting or a company and the individuals would say, we're not, we're, we're Chinese. We're not that innovative. We're Hong Kongese. We're not that, we're not like you in the west or we're not like Americans. We don't ask these questions. And if you treat them a certain way, show these individuals certain things and demonstrate the capabilities, there is a business at the speed of Asia that doesn't match anywhere in the world. I mean, I've seen things done in days that take months in other parts of the world. And so this comment of, look, looking to the United States to become a leader again, I like that because I'm an American. But at the same time, I don't like it because we actually need 212, 218 countries and territories around the world to each step up and play that role.

Absolutely. And I think what, you know, we have centuries of history and it would be, it would be, I guess, sort of unusual for us to ignore the learning, you know, our innovativeness, as you said, our expediency in trying to get things done. But we have, obviously that's part of the reason why we have a network that's in Asia is we are looking at making sure we harness this Asian thinking, this Asian leadership to communicate with each other, to bring thinking with each other. But as I said, for a long time we have looked at the west to provide that leadership thinking. And some of these metrics have been developed in the west. And we're looking at making sure that we put an Asian lens definitely to them. And if we're making the commitments that we are, we actually have follow through on those commitments. And who knows, in many countries, infrastructure is being developed from scratch. It is an opportunity to actually build back better. You know, you have commitments that you have in terms of trying to get them access to electricity, access to water, access to sanitation. There is nothing to stop that infrastructure being built with a sort of a climate sort of focus to it, to making sure that those greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by whatever's built. So it could be as opposed to having coal or gas powered or fossil fuel powered grids, you know, you could be looking at solar, you could be looking at renewable, other forms of renewable. So that's the thing that we could be thinking differently because it's Asia, because we're sometimes building this infrastructure up from scratch and we could bring that Asian thinking. So which is part of the reason, you know, that our network has ended up being so vibrant and we to be able to talk about the thinking and the experiences and the Challenges of Asia.

The phrase that I would commonly say in Asia is that Europe is just as far away from Asia as the United States is from Asia. 13, 14, 15, 16 hour flight, 12 hour flight. It's far away and it's built its infrastructure in a different way and it's a different way of thinking. And Asia has its own way of addressing challenges, looking at yin and yang or all sorts of belief structures. And I think Asia is an absolutely wonderful place which can bring in and create its own new future. Not saying separate from the world because it's connected. But that phrase of looking to America, not West, but looking to America as the solution means that somebody else is going to give it. And I think that that phrase should be changed as to we're capable, everybody's capable, and we bring our own flavor and we learn from around the world and decide what's best for this region.

Absolutely. So, you know, as I said, not having the US Be part of this and having Japan and Korea and China and India sort of start making its own commitments quite separate from the US was, you know, we're definitely seeing Asians saying we need to focus on us and we need to come come up with leadership and thinking that's unique for us and make things about, you know, it's about our countries, it's about our populations. So clearly they're, you know, they. It's quite obvious by what's been done that, you know, it's Asia for Asia.

Well, it's also in a different level. I was on the phone, I can't mention the person's name, but I was on the phone with the CEO of Asia for European brand, very large brand in the region. And one of the challenges that he had with the employer he was with before as CEO was they wanted to bring everything and centralize it back in Asia and Europe. And there's no way you cannot have representation in Asia if you're going to sell to Asia. It's a different world. It operates differently. China operates differently. Feet on the ground, understanding the differences between Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, they all act differently. And yet there's, there's. I really do think that there can be a lot more power, intellectual power and innovativeness that comes out of that region. If there was a mindset change, I agree with you.

It's a heterogeneous landscape. It's got its own, you know, it's not, you know, Asia is not one country. And whatever, you know, they say, whatever you say about Asia is true. The opposite's also True. Right. So you've got, you know, it's got its own, you know, it's definitely. You've got your own languages, you've got legislation, you've got all the political and currency risks. You know, we have differences even between our social investment readiness. When we look at, you know, India and Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam are those that are, you know, ahead. We've got even, you know, those that are still somewhat nascent, such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar. So, you know, what we also recognize is that whilst you've got some of the greatest challenges here, you've also got some of the greatest investment opportunities. You know, a lot of our members are kind of structurally advantaged by this large addressable market in Asia. As I said, 60% of the population of the world sits here. You can definitely align with some of the megatrends. You've got, you know, clearly strong, you know, aging populations in some countries, such as Japan. And you've got, you know, average age of the young workforce in India being 28 or 29. And you've got, you know, you've got this ability to bridge the two. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity here. And we're seeing that there is people taking advantage of this opportunity and being able to create impact at the same time. We are seeing, you know, whether it comes to even sort of with respect to philanthropy, we're seeing, you know, people taking risks. We're looking at products that could reach out to this. I don't know if you're familiar with sort of blended finance type of products. We're seeing some of those take off here, you know, those in.

Because explain them just for someone who's not heard it from your perspective on the finance side.

So, you know, these are sort of what are called, I think, pay for success models is how they're known for in the West. And we are. See, it's. What happens is philanthropic capital kind of plays a catalytic role when it comes to the splendid finance. And the first of its kind was a social impact bond that was set up in Peterborough in the uk it was to stop convicts from reoffending. So that it was a program that was set up in place to achieve that outcome. The original funders, so there was somebody who gave funding up front, and once the outcomes were achieved, the British government made payments against the program. So these are called social impact bonds. And the pair of the outcome is the government and there's a risk funder who pays up front and provides capital for the project. And then somebody sits and evaluates that project as to whether the outcomes are being met and then the risk funder is repaid. So some of our, you know, our private wealth members are interested in this kind of funding from a philanthropic point of view. They look at it either from a risk funder point of view or from an outcome point funder point of view. And you know where the outcome fund is not the government is called a development impact bond. So in Japan we've seen such products take off. We've seen them trying to target healthcare issues when it comes to diabetes prevention, colorectal cancer. In India there was a big development impact bond set up where the funding was actually made by rich individuals who were part of UBS Optimus. And this saw a lot of success. We've seen something similar launch in July 2019 and it's called the Haryana Early Literacy Outcomes Development Bond. It's designed again it's an evidence based program for about 115,000 primary school children as expected to operate till March 2022. Again it's with you to getting outcomes for these children. So again we have had this come out of CSR funding. The government of India took legislative action about a few years ago to support the social sector in mobilizing this private sector, giving India mandated back in 2014 that the corporate sector needs to set aside 2% of its annual profits towards corporate social responsibility. So when it came to the DIB kind of structures, this provided a pool of funding to launch these investments, innovative products. So we've actually seen government regulation, we've seen CSR being provided by corporate foundations being used to achieve, you know, I guess literacy outcomes for children that perhaps, you know, literacy is a big issue in India. People come out with, you know, undergrad degrees without, you know, having certain basics being covered. So they wanted to make sure that they got those literacy outcomes. And this is and clearly someone external sits who evaluates whether the program is achieving what it is it's intended to achieve.

So again, 2% is an amazing number that they were willing or were able to get.

Well it, it was debated, hotly debated, criticized as you can imagine from the corporate sector. But it's mobilization of capital, it is ability to. And because it was mandated, now you can collaborate with this pool of capital and set up an innovative structure because this know the CSR had to give anyway. But this is providing some kind of guarantee, some kind of first loss provision this risk funder can take on because this pool of capital has already been set aside for trying to achieve certain philanthropic goals. So I Think, you know, clearly again, the government had to play a role in making sure that this mandate was set aside. But you saw corporate sector sets, you know, step up and then you had philanthropy join in. So again, this is where the, you know, the power of ability to collaborate becomes. Again, at each and every stage it becomes paramount that we bring this collaboration up to the forefront because it is clearly these types of products where, you know, philanthropy, corporate government, everybody had a role to play.

We've kind of looking at the outline we had the corporate, environmental and social impact in Asia which we've kind of covered in some degree. We've covered strategic philanthropy and innovation which we've kind of been going over in the past few and now we're talking about public, private partner, private sector alliances, public sector alliances. What can you add to those or what do you want to add to them that we didn't cover?

I think what we've seen is that we have seen the governments actively listening and fostering to true partnerships. We saw positive trends even pre Covid in Japan they've been thinking about establishing an impact investment wholesaler which will draw on capital from bank accounts that have been about dormant for about 10 years. Very much like the big society capital in the UK so it's expected to disperse about 50 million in the first year with the goal of reaching half a billion annually within five years. We've also seen government support cross border impact investing initiatives and this is not just for their own country, like in the case of Japan, but we've seen in Singapore. Temasek Trust is one of our members. Again it launched an impact investing fund called ABC World in June of 2019. It invests in companies that funnel their efforts towards South Asia, Southeast Asia as well as China. And again it's looking at themes such as financial and digital inclusion, better health, education, climate and water. One of the more critical forms of government support for the social economy is through enacting legislation. South Korea was the first Asian country to support social entrepreneurship with a social enterprise protection act in 2007. We've seen Vietnam.

What does that mean? What does that mean, the act?

So what the act meant was that basically you try and incentivize people to invest into that sector. You are therefore encouraging maturity of that sector. So they have put aside capital to do that and they themselves set up something called a growth ladder fund. So people who, you know, very much like in the uk, you invest in a VC that is looking at early stage, you actually get some tax relief up front to be able to do so, so they're looking at what else could be done to support the social enterprise sector, to incentivize people to invest in that sector and to sort of, sort of put a protective layer around it. So and I think that's critical for again I know Thailand has launched something in the same space and they've launched a Thai social enterprise organization. Vietnam has passed legislation for social enterprises as well. We are also seeing governments play a role when it comes to, you know, for example in Turkey, Indonesia, UNDP and the Indonesian government partnered with another member, PT Asset Principal Asset Management. And what they did was, you know, these are Islamic countries, they catalyze Islamic philanthropy funds, Islamic fintech as well as with support from government agencies towards the COVID 19 relief efforts. In Malaysia, again another Islamic, strongly Islamic country you have have sukuks which are like Islamic finance vehicles. Now they're looking at those supporting those to fund green projects as well. So again governments are having a role to play in facilitating the legislation that enables or looking at investment opportunities through their, you know, their, I guess their sovereign funds to much like the Temasek was one is to invest in cross border impact investing activities as well.

So most of the funds that you just outlined were country specific. How are you seeing, you said you're seeing cross border, so are you seeing Korea with Thailand or Vietnam or any of these doing collaborative deals?

So we have seen, as I said, the Temasek Trust one, the ABC World one is actually going cross border. So it's going towards South Asia, Southeast Asia and China. We have another couple of fund members, Crevisk and Misk, they launched Remake City so they're South Korean but they put together accelerating programs in Jakarta, in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh and they got support from the South Korea DFI Quaker to help set up these accelerator programs. And the two funds, Misk and Crevice themselves make follow on equity investments into successful ventures that come out of these accelerators. So out of the programs, the acceleration programs. So I think again they go beyond where the government took them to be able to then deploy capital themselves. So they are, you know, countries are looking beyond their own borders, especially the sort of the, you know, how we distinguish between Tier 1 and Tier 4 countries. Some of the ones that are closer to would are deploying capital in other markets because they see the need to develop the region as well.

So I guess it comes down the, the last point you had on there. Why is this the right time and why are you an optimist?

So I think, you know, we have collective Will and determination. And these are the most important factors to bring about change. This is the right time because we've seen this convergence of collective will, but we've also seen capital and technology having a role to play. You know, we've also heard of the shared numbers that are focused on sustainability and positive social impact. We obviously need to leverage of this appetite for social investments that we're seeing in the private sector. You know, why I consider myself to be an optimist is because I think given this appetite, people will see that there's opportunity to support intermediaries, people like ourselves, in actually achieving returns, actually connecting people, having a framework in place to actually look at success metrics. So we are definitely looking at an opportunity to collaborate with people. And why I'm an optimist, people kind of say hindsight is 20 20. And I think for us, I believe 2020 is sufficient hindsight for us to act. You know, Covid has been disruptive, but also it's kind of amplified the need for investing with an impact lens. You know, we're seeing stakeholders responding to this need and we're seeing private wealth, governments, private sector as well as philanthropy coming together to do so. But you know, we also recognize Asia is a heterogeneous patchworker. Regulations and development needs. And again, this underlines the value of the knowledge of the landscape which organizations like AVPN have. We enable our members to learn, connect with intermediaries who can assist with navigating this regulatory labyrinth. And we put, we can help them get access, put structures in place that are supportive of their investor needs as well as the social entrepreneurs needs. So I'm an optimist because I believe we can collaborate and connect funders to opportunities. In all our conversations, we can stress about the importance of going beyond financial capital. More than ever, we can leverage our human intellectual capital to grow this sector as well.

You had mentioned earlier that when we talked, we jumped off topic a little bit to the challenges in the timelines. You're an optimist with a need to go faster so that we can address things like climate change at the levels that are scientifically dictated that we need to hit in terms of sea level, water rise, the 45 degree temperatures in the middle of the last month that were In Australia, the 460 million creatures that died during the fires, the challenges that are being faced in the region. As an optimist, how would you optimistically say you can accelerate that? You, I mean, you yourself, we don't have to talk about avpm, the role you're doing. I think you're brilliant at what you, what you've shared in the, what I heard you say earlier and what you're saying today. Today. How do we make this, how do we do this faster? I mean seriously faster. Like fall on a sword if you don't, faster.

The only mechanism I see is, you know, there's a carrot and stick component to it. I think we have to incentivize people to do this better. And part of that, and I'm not quite sure what those incent incentives will look like, but we also have to have the stick to say, okay, you need top down regulation to ensure that there's compliance at each and every entity level and we need to that compliance to come and that regulatory burdens to come sooner rather than later because this is an urgent need that needs to be addressed. And I think Asia, the regulators are definitely taking that on board and recognize that there's an education process through this as well. So they are setting up sustainability centers and educating corporate leaders on this piece. But there's also regulation that they're thinking about. But I think also we, I mean, all I can do from my side is continue to do what I'm doing. Educate, educate, educate. Bring people together to talk about the work they're doing, talk about the challenges, collaborate where possible to where they individually cannot deal with the problem. They bring others into that, into that conversation. They look at mobilizing that capital to make sure that the outcomes are being achieved and making us very metric focused, making sure that we are transparent about those metrics as well. And we're constantly iterating and thinking with a longer term horizon, thinking compassionately, thinking about not just ourselves, but our next generation. And I think that's all we can do at this point in time. So, you know, if we follow through, we should be getting to the outcomes that we wish to achieve. Because you know, as I think you know, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said, you know, there is no, there's no Planet B we can go to. This is the only planet we've got. So if we don't solve it, we gonna find ourselves, you know, in a situation where we don't know what our next generation will inherit.

We could probably go in many directions off of that. And those would be long conversations. They might even flip over to the other podcast that we've got. I want to thank you, really appreciate you taking this time today to share some of the thoughts that you've got. So thank you very much for being here today.

Thank You, David, thank you for having me.

I want to thank everybody out there who's taken the time to listen in. And I do hope that you learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others when it comes to redefining tomorrow, the bigger challenge. The bigger challenge, I believe, is helping individuals see that the questions we're asking are not always the questions we should be asking. So one way, here's a tip. If you. How do I say this in a way that's useful? If you set a target. Let me pick something. If you have something that's 20 minutes away from your. Wherever you are today, pick a building, a structure in your mind, and you already determined how you would get there. So let's assume most people would use a car or some type of public transportation, depending on the city, country you live in. Ask yourself, how would you get there in 12 minutes? Okay, you probably might have come up with motorcycle or that you'd. From car you transfer to a subway system, an mtr. What if you had to be there in nine minutes? Well, you'd go faster. You get a police car. And typically when I ask people, how would they get there in seven minutes? They'd say, can't be done. Or the other one is helicopter. And I think helicopter. I mean, that's not the easiest way, but I let it go. And then I say, how about five minutes? You have to be there in five minutes. And almost invariably most people say you can't. And I always say to them, you could have zoomed. You could have video conferenced. Our mind solves our challenges, typically in human form, by going faster and faster and faster. If you ask and think and keep on bringing those questions down. If we did in 2035, we do it one way. If we did in 2030, we do it a different way. Keep on asking yourself questions that push the limit so you can't go faster, that faster is no longer an option. And the new solutions come out of those questions, because that's when you start to have to push the limits of what you're capable of and the need to learn more. And Komal knows that the reason I'm on this call today is so that I can hear her thinking, so that I myself can learn to go faster. I want to find something that gives me an answer that I hadn't heard before. So what would be getting back to you, Kamel? What's the number one way to connect with you if someone wanted to connect with you?

I think the best way would probably be LinkedIn. I'm quite frequent on LinkedIn, but also you can write to me at Komal K O M A L Sahu S A H U P N. So that's my email address, and that's probably the LinkedIn or Komal SahuVPN Asia. Probably the two best ways to connect with me.

Komal, thank you very much. Always remember out there, always remember that you can't fix yesterday, you can only create tomorrow. If you're interested in connecting with me, you connect with me at davidavidgoldsmith.com I'm at Twitter @goldsmith. I am on LinkedIn @David Allen A L L E n Goldsmith. I'm on Facebook and you can also see me on Instagram @MrDavidGoldsmith. Well, for everybody out there, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.