Vineet Rai, Founder and Chairman, Aavishkaar Group recently undertook a road journey , travelling across states and traversing over 4500 Kms. The thoughts penned down are from this travelogue.

Some of you have repeatedly asked me to pen down my thoughts on the journey I took. Here is my note on what I did , What I saw and What did I make out of the travel.

I have been driving on India roads for long. I have a reasonable experience of driving around the globe including most of Europe and USA. Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee brought in the idea of really high quality road infrastructure, the effort slowed down marginally in between but post 2014 the work on National Highways will make all Indians proud.

During my 4500 KM drive, I drove on multiple National and State highways  and they are as good as anything I have seen in Germany, France and Holland or USA.

As we drove from Mumbai and stopped for breakfast, it was clear that roadside activities are pretty much back to normal and the roadside vendors sales was almost at the same level as it was Pre-Covid days. Now this is not uniform and one must see this response from the road side vendor with a pinch of salt but the fact is return to normal seems not abnormal anymore.

As we moved further and further away from Mumbai it seemed the fear of Covid 19 vanished. Almost 100 KM from Maharashtra -MP border the Visarjan ( The deity/ goddess is taken to a pond or river and she is let go to re-emerge next year) festivities were getting very public and in your face.

As I drove into MP, and it was the day after Dussehra ( festival of victory of Good over Evil), the festivities hit a crescendo and we were caught into massive visarjan traffic jams in Sagar ( erstwhile education power house ) and Damoh ( Small city in MP State) where we were jammed for hours as 30 -40 tractor trolleys carrying idols for visarjan along with 1000’s of devotees blocked our way.

We drove into Varanasi and Google map took us to the newly being laid Six lane highway from Varanasi to Gazipur & Gorakhpur.  The highway was an amazing contributor to infrastructure development  coming through in Purvanchal.

Those uninitiated with Eastern UP, Varanasi and east of UP is far behind in development even within UP ( Which is agrarian state). The incumbent government has unleashed some serious infrastructure development backed by some outstanding work done by local Member of Parliament  Manoj Sinha who despite the good work lost the elections recently. Good work does not necessarily get your votes is clear.

What used to take two hours from Varanasi was achieved in 40 minutes and this is when the road was only 70% complete. I am excited to see the progress and change on the ground.

Reached my village and found that the only one wearing the mask was Mr. Covid. Rest of Village folks did not even remember corona except occasional mention from the hard lockdown and how it was difficult in the past. My take away from the ground is that while Covid 19 has not gone but its debilitating fear from the hinterland has completely gone. The economic activity is back to normal and there is no real fear amongst people.

I visited Chief Medical Officer of Gazipur. Aavishkaar Foundation had provided support to the CMO office with Mask, PPE Kits, and Medical Equipment’s. He was grateful and thankful. He also had suffered from Covid and was very careful with both mask and gloves in place. He did tell me that Gazipur district reports 10-15 case daily but things are  under control. He do understand that people are not fearful and hence careless but suggests that this may be  largely because of very low mortality rate and quick recovery in most cases except where co-morbidity is high.  It seems the fear of the disease from the mind of people have receded.

Driving to Diara – Also known as Floating Sands of Ganges … My ancestral lands. I would be sharing a video that would show case some fun stuff I did during my visit including driving to the floating sand islands or Diara  with River Ganges flowing on both sides. The rivulet on my side of approach had dried down so I could drive to the island. Pristine, beautiful and peaceful and it was amazing to be served bati-chokha ( the traditional food on your land by the loyal collogues who live and manage the lands). I had the urge to give some work out to my father’s old gun so few shots in the air were also fired for fun sake

I was supposed to drive to Samastipur but had to cancel that as Bihar Elections were on and that means a big black vehicle would be stopped and searched by police quiet regularly for Cash, Liquor or any other contraband. A 6 hour ride may become a 12 hour ride one way and So I dropped the idea. Instead drove to Prayagraj ( Erstwhile Allahabad) passed the Sangam, the holy place where the Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati meet and drove via Kanpur to Noida . Road construction work made life difficult to drive from Prayagraj to Kanpur but beyond Kanpur it was an exceptional drive again.

My drive time from Mumbai to Gazipur was 22 hour nonstop despite the visarjan Jam in Sagar and Damoh. My drive from Noida to Mumbai was another 22 hours and we drove through Agra and made two stops as my father was with me. Overall 4500 KM were driven in driving time of around 52 hours which again reflect not just our driving stamina but the exceptional condition of Indian roads

My Conclusion – Covid 19 exist and would remain so but Hinterland in India has moved on. There are many factors but the most important one is the acceptance and adjustment to the fear of Covid. My other take away is that unlike cities where vertical construction and interdependence of social hierarchy with each other ( Rich and Maids) means you are interacting with far more people on a normal day than a person living in rural India does. Also the chances of you interacting with someone you do not know at all in Urban India is exceptionally high compared to Rural India and that explains lower transmission.

What was quite obvious is that social distancing is way of life in Rural India. The other observation is that most dense parts of rural India are sparse compared to least dense part of urban India and that explains why despite lack of masks the rural spread of Covid appears to be much less . One can always explain all what I said by saying there are no tests being done and hence we do not really know if any of what I am saying makes sense.

My prediction is that most of the non-Metro India would be back to normalcy as soon as train start and small trade picks up. Agriculture is doing well, Microfinance has stumbled as people earning capacity is hit, but my reading is that in three months’ time Microfinance would make a roaring comeback as people see business return.

Finally there is stress in Urban India on earnings but Rural India is not as stressed and is able to deal with the pandemic much better.

Dear All

We are extremely happy to inform you that Business India , one of India’s highly respected media house , has given an extensive 8-page story on the Aavishkaar Group in the latest issue of the Business India (Print Magazine  + Online) (Issue dated September 21-October 4, 2020, page number 34 to 41)

Titled, ‘Leading from the front‘ with sub-headline as ‘The Aavishkaar Group has created a distinct leadership position in the impact investment space‘, this is the biggest corporate story on the Group for the year, covering our Group’s journey, covering all the key leadership, portfolio clients as well as views from the industry veterans like Vijay Mahajan on the Group.

The Mumbai-based Aavishkaar group has come a long way since it began its journey in 2001. Started with a seed capital of Rs5,000, the Vineet Rai-led group has emerged as one of the leading players in the impact investing space, managing assets of around $1.1 billion. The group is a leader in developing the impact ecosystem in India and is also one of the leading players globally.

A pioneer in taking an entrepreneurship approach towards development, it has a presence not only in India but also in underserved South East Asia and Africa regions. Backed by 7,000 employees present across India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Kenya, the rural-focused Aavishkaar group has invested in 70-odd companies working in the social space and claims to have impacted the lives of 110 million people (55 per cent of whom are women), and created over 300,000 jobs and livelihoods.

Started as a one-entity venture capital organisation in the impact investing space, with its first fund ‘Aavishkaar’, the group has become a complete development ecosystem, currently offering products and services across equity-led impact investing, debt funding, advisories and research, and financing to SMEs. The group is a leader in all these businesses for the impact investing space.

Its flagship entity, Aavishkaar Capital, is a pioneer in equity-led impact investing in high risk, high impact businesses, while Arohan is one of India’s largest technology-led financial inclusion platforms; Ashv Finance (earlier intelleGrow) is a specialised lender to small and growing businesses and Intellecap is a thought leader and advisory business with a focus on sustainability.

Intellecap’s common action platform, Sankalp Forum, is one of the largest global inclusive development platforms for entrepreneurs and investors and brings together the ecosystem to shape the way markets work for delivering the United Nations-set Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. So far, Intellecap has conducted 23 Sankalp Summits: 11 in India, seven in Nairobi, three in Jakarta and two more in other countries.

Intellecap has delivered over 500 global engagements across over 40 countries as well as syndicated investments of over $500 million. Select clients of Intellecap include the USAID, Rockefeller Foundation, World Bank, Ford Foundation, The Hans Foundation, Doen Foundation, GIZ, DFID, Hindustan Unilever, P&G, International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.

In fact, the Aavishkaar group has turned into a complete development platform which has a whole gamut of solutions for the impact investing landscape which is now gradually taking shape in India and is all set to commence its next growth phase where the group is looking to take its assets under management (AUM) to around $5 billion by 2025 and $12 billion by 2030.

In the process, Aavishkaar aims to help create over 10 million jobs and livelihoods in the next five years.

While in the initial years, the group struggled to raise funds and scale up its operations, the last decade or so have been quite encouraging as its AUM has risen sharply from around $25 million in 2010. With the impact sector gradually taking some shape, global investors have also shown a keen interest to be part of this success story. In the last few years, four global investors, Triodos Investment Management & Shell Foundation, Nuveen (TIAA) and FMO Bank have picked up 49 per cent in Aavishkaar’s holding platform, investing around $100 million.

Triodos Investment Management, the investment arm of European lender Triodos Bank, has also backed the group’s SME lending entity Ashv Finance, in which impact investment firm Omidyar Network, US-based fund manager Developing World Markets, community development financial institution Calvert Foundation, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (the US government’s development finance institution) and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (a philanthropic organisation started by the founder of technology company Dell) are also investors.

The group has played a large role in creating a landscape of social entrepreneurships and has built a strong organisational structure led by a core team comprising the best brains from across industries. The Aavishkaar group has become a case study in many business institutions, including Stanford Business School and IIM-Ahmedabad.

Creating livelihoods

Aavishkaar’s investee companies include, among others, Equitas, Suryoday Small Finance Bank, Utkarsh Bank and CreditAccess Grameen Ltd in the financial services space; INI Farms (now India’s largest exporters of pomegranates and bananas), AgroStar (one of the largest agri-tech companies), and Ergos (agri warehouses in rural India and working in Bihar) in the agri space; Ahmedabad-based NEPRA in waste management; fintech entity Chqbook, and GoBolt, an express supply chain company. Importantly, in most of these highly successful cases, Aavishkaar has been the early investor, actively helping them chart out their growth journeys

“The Aavishkaar group is a pioneer in the impact investment space in India. They did something that very few could have thought of doing at the time. In fact, Vineet has played a commendable role in building up this entire ecosystem in the country. He has a very dynamic personality and doesn’t hesitate to take risks. He can sense opportunities and he is one of the first to get there. Despite all sorts of challenges and headwinds, he has relentlessly worked towards creating this platform which today has become synonymous with the impact ecosystem,” says Vijay Mahajan, CEO, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and the director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies.

It was Mahajan whom Vineet Rai, the founder and chairman of the Aavishkaar group, approached with the idea of starting Aavishkaar as a micro venture fund, to kick-start the whole thing. Mahajan, who was then running the Basix Social Enterprise Group, was aligned with Rai on the idea of establishing a social enterprise which could serve needs which neither the market nor the government were able to. After Aavishkaar was formed in 2001, Mahajan was a member of its investment committee for nearly three years.

“Aavishkaar has emerged as a complete platform through lots of learning over the years. It has proved that real impact can also be achieved without compromising on the commercial aspect and that too, in a sustainable manner. The group’s ability to identify needs and develop products and solutions as per local needs is commendable. Vineet knows how to attract talent and provide the alignment that helps them work more as entrepreneurs,” says Akbar Khan, CEO of CreditEnable India, a 2017-founded entity which operates an entirely digital and curated marketplace for SME finance.

Khan was the CEO and board member of the group’s SME lending business, intelleGrow (now Ashv Finance) for two years, between 2016-18. Prior to his role at Aavishkaar, Khan spent five years at General Electric, where he was managing director and head of corporate development/M&A for GE South Asia and MENAT.

“Aavishkaar was started with the objective of providing capital to ideas that can create jobs and livelihoods in rural India. I wanted to create an ecosystem of social entrepreneurs who could carry out my vision. The idea was to use the power of human thinking which was talent and capital, to harness the entrepreneurial wheel of Indians to solve India’s problems. The big picture was that I wanted entrepreneurs to work for India and not just for money,” says Vineet Rai, 49, who while setting up his first fund also quickly went on to put up Intellecap (short form of intellectual capital) in 2002, the very next year after the formation of his equity financing business, Aavishkaar Capital. The idea was to bring capital and talent on the same platform to create a vibrant ecosystem of social entrepreneurships that could eventually create jobs and livelihoods in rural India.

From Gian to Aavishkaar

The thought process leading to this occurred to him when he was heading Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network (Gian), an Ahmedabad-based incubator set up by the Gujarat government to help farmers convert their ideas into sustainable businesses.

His journey to being appointed the CEO of Gian in 1998 was quite an interesting one. He was from UP, but grew up in Rajasthan, moving from city to town, wherever his father’s work as a hydro-geologist for the government took him. Inspired by Maharana Pratap and Chandrashekhar Azad, he grew up watching soldiers patrolling the borders of Rajasthan, and his only ambition then was to join the Armed Forces. He passed his written exams but failed the interviews every time. That was when a friend suggested that he should try for the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal.

After graduating from IIFM, he joined Ballarpur Industries and was posted in the forested lands of Odisha, from where the paper-maker sourced its raw material. He spent a little over three years on the job, fending off wild animals while managing the forests. It was while working in Odisha that he saw extreme poverty at close range. The levels of deprivation, infant deaths and malnutrition were appalling.

While being posted in Odisha, he married Swati, who had been a year junior to him at IIFM. But when the Rais were expecting their first child, his wife (who is also co-founder and actively sits on the board meetings) insisted he found a safer job away from the forest. “In fact, she gave me an ultimatum to move to a more civilised place, as our immediate neighbours were more than a kilometre away,” he says.

He applied for various positions, but found that nobody wanted someone with his background. That’s when he found out that Professor Anil Gupta of IIM, Ahmedabad, was looking for a research assistant for a project on biodiversity. Rai moved to Ahmedabad, took up the job, but realised after a year that this was not what he was looking for.

He applied to Gian, expecting the post of a manager and instead they made him the CEO. Here, he explored how innovations carried out by farmers on a small scale could be converted to good business. He realised that nurturing an innovation into a full-fledged business requires an entrepreneur, not an innovator, in the lead and since that entrepreneur was taking a risk, he required risk capital. The biggest challenge was not in finding the entrepreneur or the innovation but in providing the risk capital but that, coupled with high quality talent, could build businesses that would, as he put it, make poor people rich.

“Moreover, it also became clear that change cannot happen if capital and talent together are not taken to rural India. And that’s how the idea of Aavishkaar as the first venture fund for rural India and Intellecap as a repository for talent was born,” reminisces the Aavishkaar chief.

He quit the job and put up a venture fund to serve rural India. Being a forester, his problem was that he did not know how to raise money. Finally, through the connections he had developed while at IIM-A and Gian, he presented his ideas to a handful of expat Indians living in Singapore and managed to raise SG$100,000. Most of these people were from IIM-A.

These included Anant Nagesan, currently a part time member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Council, Arun Diaz, a veteran entrepreneur and investor who would later become a key advisor and partner in Rai’s newly formed venture capital fund, and Jayesh Parekh, who is famous for bringing Sony TV to India.

Providing non-financial support

In October 2001, the fund was formally named Aavishkaar (Hindi for ‘invention’) and in March 2002, as per his vision of bringing capital and talent together, Rai set up Intellecap, borrowing Rs1,00,000 from his wife. The idea was to provide non-financial support, including research and consultancy services, to rural enterprises and help them scale up.

While he formed the fund with the little money he raised in Singapore, he struggled to raise further money. In fact, it took him almost five years to raise the first Rs5 crore. His not being a finance guy was an impediment as it was difficult to convince investors; so was the idea (radical at the time) of using the venture capital method to serve the rural, low-income market.

Like Aavishkaar Capital, Intellecap, too, struggled initially. By 2005, Aavishkaar had managed to raise only Rs5 crore and Intellecap’s turnover was around Rs50 lakh. That’s when Rai thought of bringing in some changes. By 2005, the microfinance market had started getting some traction and Aavishkaar also decided to invest in the microfinance space as well. Moreover, Intellecap also rode the wave, advising and eventually incubating institutions like Utkarsh, Suryoday Small Finance Bank, Grameen Koota Financial Services and a few others. Today, Intellecap advises not just microfinance institutions but a whole lot of businesses from various sectors.

Between 2005 and 2007, Aavishkaar Capital expanded to Rs70 crore of fundraising and Intellecap had grown from Rs50 lakh to Rs6 crore. “Besides, we were slowly and gradually explaining to people that we were trying to make a developmental impact while making money for them. In other words, we were able to showcase that one could do business to create an impact and that was getting noticed not just in India but globally,” says Vineet Rai.

By now Aavishkaar had money but was not able to find ways to scale its business. Between 2007 and 2010, Rai and his team struggled to deal with the idea of building a scalable business model. He realised that he had to make companies that would make a difference in the lives of people and then make money, which was different from philanthropy or just doing business. Moreover, this approach, he felt, would also help him attract reputed professionals, something he felt was paramount to achieve the desired scale.

During 2009 and 2010, both Aavishkaar and Intellecap ramped up their talent pool, roping in reputed bankers, consultants and other senior industry people from across industries and geographies.

This new team (which included, among others, Manoj Nambiar, the head of the group’s microfinance business and Sushma Kaushik, one of the partners of the group’s flagship equity financing business) with good industry experience, started changing the group’s positioning in the market from a young and ambitious entity to a potentially emerging entrepreneurial one that was trying to make an impact and also create value.

Nambiar, who is currently the Managing Director of Arohan is one of the most respected and known leaders in the microfinance business. Before joining the group, he was based in the Middle East and was looking to return to Mumbai where his parents were based. He wanted to work for an organisation which respected who he was, and with people who could work with him and bring in new ideas. He found Rai’s offer of mutual trust interesting, although he joined at a significantly lower salary than what he was drawing in his earlier organisation. It was the same with all the other people.

“All these people were talented, with good experience and could have worked in big organisations with hefty salaries. Instead, they joined us because of a common goal to create a real impact in the lives of people in a very sustainable manner,” states Vineet.

By 2010, the total AUM of the group grew to $27 million with 80 employees, but it still lacked the desired scale. By then the group had incubated a large number of microfinance institutions and invested in around 25-odd companies like Utkarsh, Suryoday, and others. However, in 2010, the microfinance crisis hit both Aavishkaar and Intellecap. One of the learnings for the group from the crisis was to have its own microfinance institution and expand its lending beyond Aavishkaar Capital.

The biggest risk

In 2012, even though the microfinance sector was still recovering from the crisis, the Aavishkaar group took one of its biggest risks and bought over the Kolkata-based microfinance company, Arohan Financial Services for Rs12 crore. Even though Arohan was struggling, the group saw a good opportunity in the form of Arohan delivering on its vision of building a microfinance institution in low income states like Bihar, UP, Jharkhand and Odisha. Nambiar, who joined Rai in Mumbai, currently manages Arohan and is based in Kolkata. He is also the chairman of the microfinance industry body, Microfinance Institutions Network or MFIN, and is on the boards of many other industry institutions.

With its vision to bridge the opportunity gap for the three-billion underserved population globally, the group is driven by its mission to create livelihoods and jobs as also empower underserved households and small businesses in a sustainable manner.

By now, the group had a total AUM of $120 million. It continued to grow slowly until 2015 when Aavishkaar decided to set up a new fund in South East Asia, and became the only Indian fund manager with an international fund. By 2015, the group expanded its total AUM to around $200 million, but the scale and momentum were still missing. But by now more and more people had heard of the group and started joining them. Among the key people who joined the group were E.N. Venkat, partner from Lazard who worked at setting up the group’s international fund in South East Asia. It was Venkat who realised something was missing, which resulted in a lack of the required momentum and scale of the group.

While Rai was connected to all the four businesses of the group, none of the businesses were talking to each other and were operating in isolation. In other words, though the group was small, the structure was quite complex. Rai realised this and asked the core team to work on a process that could bring all the entities onto a single platform so that the group, as a holding company, could directly hold all the key assets. It also needed $25 million in order to execute this new structure. In 2017, the group raised this money from both Shell and Triodos.

Triodos Investment Management, the investment arm of European lender Triodos Bank, invested $15 million on the holding company level, while Shell Foundation, an independent charity established by the Shell Group, contributed $10 million to this equity-led funding.

This was followed by two more rounds of investments at the holding company level by global investors. In 2018, Nuveen, the investment management arm of diversified financial services giant Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), invested about $32 million to pick up 20 per cent stake in the group. Nuveen had earlier invested in the group, but as limited partners in its funds. “The Aavishkaar group is an excellent fit within our impact investing approach, which, among other goals, focuses on ways to make basic services available for low-income and underserved people around the world while also providing return opportunities for our clients,” said Vijay Advani, CEO of Nuveen, on the investment. As a part of transaction, Advani joined Aavishkaar’s board. Nuveen, which was acquired by TIAA in 2014, manages assets of over $950 billion and is spread across 16 countries.

In the third phase of its consolidation, which started in 2010, the group, in September last year, raised $37 million from the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, FMO, which also had participated earlier as a limited partner in Aavishkaar Capital. “We will work with the Aavishkaar group to strengthen its institutional foundation so that they can focus on what they do well. Vineet Rai and his team have a terrific record of finding innovative solutions to help solve many of the key social and environmental issues of our day. We look forward to growing our relationship with these world-class social entrepreneurs,” says Peter van Mierlo, CEO, FMO.

With all these investments in place, the group, which also utilises part of the money to strengthen its ownership in its subsidiaries, plans to pursue its vision and expand its business to other parts of Africa and South East Asia. Aiming to take its total AUM up to $ 5 billion by 2025 and $12 billion by 2030, it is also looking to ramp up its capabilities in a significant way.

“We now have all the requisite structure and competencies to achieve our goals in the expanding impact ecosystem. While India will be our primary market, we want to replicate our success story in other locations in Africa and South East Asia. In fact, we have already forayed into some of these countries and are now looking to ramp up our overall overseas efforts,” says Anurag Agrawal, COO, Aavishkaar Group, who along with Rai, Chairman, Aavishkaar Group; Swati Rai, Director, Aavishkaar Group; Kaushik and Tarun Mehta, Partners, Aavishkaar Capital; Nambiar of Arohan, Nikesh Kumar Sinha, CEO, Ashv Finance and Vikas Bali, CEO, Intellecap, are the promoters (holding 51 per cent stake in the holding company) and together form the strong leadership team which is going to drive the scale, going forward.

Setting a goal

The group has already put up a roadmap to achieve the set goal of $12 billion AUM by 2030. In phase I, which aims to achieve $5 billion by 2025, the group needs to create five times more jobs and livelihoods than today.

Around the same time, the group also started another entity called IntelleGrow, to experiment and provide venture debt to early stage social or impact enterprises with an investment of Rs2 crore and some financial assistance from the Shell Foundation. Besides, it also set up another NBFC MFI called Intellecash which is now part of Arohan. That was how the second phase of the journey started after 2010 as the group was looking to scale up its business.

“The group aims to have at least 20 million direct microfinance customers through Arohan, lend to thousands of micro, small and medium enterprises through the new entity Ashv, and Aavishkaar should be able to raise a significant amount of capital to support hundreds of enterprises in India, Africa and Southeast Asia in order to create local jobs and livelihoods,” says Rai, adding that out of this $5 billion, microfinance company business Arohan should contribute $2.5 billion, Ashv Finance: $1 billion and Aavishkaar Capital the remaining amount of around $1.5 billion. Intellecap will be able to create bridges between all the ecosystems and will operate in India, Africa and South East Asia with 80 per cent business in India and the reaming 20 per cent in the other two global markets.

In the next five years, from 2025 to 2030, says Anurag Agrawal, we will have to grow the business two times at least. To do that the group need to replicate the strategies of Arohan and Ashv Finance in Africa and also scale the assets under management on the impact side to around $2.5 billion, taking it to the goal of $12 billion by 2030. This is going to be based on another entity creation between Arohan, Ashv Finance and Aavishkaar Capital.

“We are all ready to work towards achieving the set goals as the entire impact investing ecosystem is undergoing a big change. For a very long time, people used to consider impact investing as not for profit investing or philanthropic investing or grant based investing. However, Aavishkaar’s philosophy has always been to invest in businesses which have profitable business models and the ability to scale and create 10x kind of impact,” says Sushma Kaushik who has been a part of this transition journey since 2010.

“We are now all geared up to expand our impact ecosystem. While our focus will remain on India, we will now increase our impact investment in South East Asia and Africa. We will try to replicate our Indian success stories in these markets and help create a strong ecosystem over there,” states Tarun Mehta.

Aavishkaar Capital, the impact investing arm of the Aavishkaar Group, is a global pioneer in taking an entrepreneurship-based approach to scaling businesses for impact. It invests in sectors such as agritech and food processing, inclusive finance and essential services across India, emerging Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Aligned to 13 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, Aavishkaar Capital has so far raised six funds with a total AUM of around $400 million.

Out of 70 investments across companies, it has given full or partial exit in 32 cases. Aavishkaar Capital will return to the market sometime soon to raise $300 million for its next fund. Rai is of the view that Covid-19 is going to be one of the biggest disruptors and this once again validates the need for creating a strong and robust impact ecosystem in the world and thereby help needy people. “The current Covid-19 crisis is the biggest disruption mankind has ever seen. It remains to be seen how we, as an impact player, keep the world healthy, safe and sustainable while generating growth and return for our capital,” he adds.

Established in 2006 in Kolkata, Arohan Financial Services is Eastern India’s largest NBFC microfinance institution. As on March 2020, the organisation is operational in 16 states (of which 11 are low-income states across the central, east and northeast) and offers financial inclusion products to over 2.3 million underserved clients, through 711 branches with a loan portfolio of over Rs4,800 crore in microfinance and MSME lending.

“Driven by its mission to empower underserved households and small businesses through a range of financial services, in a manner sustainable for all stakeholders, Arohan plans to impact 20 million lives by the year 2025,” says Manoj Nambiar.

Incubated in 2012-13 as IntelleGrow, Ashv Finance is a tech-led NBFC empowering small and emerging businesses. Last year, as part of group restructuring, IntelleGrow, the NBFC micro-financing business and Tribe, the fintech platform of the group, were merged to form the MSME lending arm, Ashv Finance. Started as an early stage clean energy lender, it transitioned itself into focusing on micro and small businesses across multitier towns in India.

“With a strong distribution network and innovative technology, we are looking forward to a future of being known as the Phygital NBFC. Our products are uniquely designed to serve the financial requirements of the MSMEs in the Indian landscape. We nurture growing businesses with finances at the right time in order to unlock their growth potential,” states Nikesh Sinha.

Creating a sustainable society

Intellecap, on the other hand, is a pioneer in building enabling ecosystems and channelling capital to create and nurture a sustainable and equitable society. Founded in 2002, it works across critical sectors like agriculture, livelihoods, climate change, clean energy, financial services, gender inclusion, healthcare, water and sanitation. Intellecap, through its presence in India and Africa, provides a broad range of consulting, research and investment banking services to multilateral agencies, development finance institutions, social enterprises, corporations, investors, policymakers and donors.

Intellecap recently created a platform called Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF) to identify enterprises which are working in the textile space on environmentally and socially relevant issues like better and non-chemical dyes, single use and bio-degradable plastics, etc. “We would like to increase our business and team size by five times over the next 10 years.

“With every challenge there is an opportunity. Immense opportunity has opened up due to this Covid-19 challenge. Every business will be forced through this pandemic to see how it can take care of nature – clean land, clean air and clean water,” believes Vikas Bali.

As of March 2020, Ashv Finance has expanded to 14 branches and empowered over 2,000 businesses. It ended FY20 at Rs391 crore outstanding, and the 2025 plan is to end with about 250 branches, with Rs9,600 crore on the books. This year they are planning to end at Rs700 crore. Ashv will be one of the key value drivers in achieving group’s $5 billion target, by 2025.With all these capabilities and competencies, the Aavishkaar group is all geared up to achieve its goals going forward and maintain its leadership position in the global impact investing space. It has been able to put forth a strong and robust platform which provides an array of services and solutions to the impact investing sector, the existence of which has become more relevant in the current context. Its pioneering efforts, across equity-led impact investing, for high risk, high impact businesses as also taking an entrepreneurship-based approach towards development, have now been well documented and have become a model for others to replicate.

Most importantly, Aavishkaar’s vision of creating impact without compromising on commercial aspects, is something that has certainly added flavour to the entire ecosystem, which in the past, struggled to exhibit the desired results. This particular shift is now also attracting a good deal of attention from traditional PE players. This will generate a good deal of resources for the impact sector and provide much-needed momentum and eventually the three billion underserved global population will get a better deal. And there is little doubt that here, the Aavishkaar group will be a key player.

Synopsis –  This article is part of NextBillion’s series “Enterprise in the Time of Coronavirus,” which explores how the business and development sectors are responding to the pandemic.

The world has experienced many different crises and pandemics over the years, which have disrupted national, regional and even global economies – sometimes gravely. Although the disruption due to COVID-19 is not novel, its magnitude may be greater than any crisis we’ve faced in many years. Whether it was the economic recession in the United States and Europe in 2008, or the microfinance crisis in India in 2010, the effects major crises have on the economy of a country and region are profound, and they can vary greatly depending on the regional context.

For instance in East Africa, the COVID-19 crisis is having particularly far-reaching consequences due in part to the prevalence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To take just one example, 98% of the businesses in Kenya are SMEs – and other economies in the region are also heavily dependent on the SME sector. These businesses are especially vulnerable to the current crisis due to factors such as the disruption in supply chains, which has increased the cost of doing business for companies with already tight margins, and the loss of income due to pay cuts or job lay-offs, which has reduced the purchasing power of these enterprises’ customers. For this reason, many resources have been rightly focused on helping these entrepreneurs survive the pandemic.

But though it’s true that entrepreneurs will need financing to ensure that their businesses survive the economic downturn, it’s also important to look at the other side of the coin – the funders that are supporting them. Most institutional funds are currently focusing on their well-performing portfolios by providing monetary support to ensure these enterprises’ survival, so they may not be deploying capital to new investee companies unless the deal was negotiated to term-sheet level prior to COVID-19. The burden thus lies with angel investors to support these companies in order to ensure their short-term survival – and subsequently, to ensure a healthy pipeline for the institutional investment funds after the crisis has passed.

However, angel investing in East Africa is still nascent, with high net worth individuals opting to invest in asset classes like real estate and money markets, among others. Further, some of these wealthy investors are unaware of the opportunities that early-stage companies present. Therefore, the region’s angel investors will need to exercise some level of aggressiveness and adopt a high-risk tolerance in seeking out new investment opportunities.

If you’re an angel investor focused on East Africa, how can you ensure that you not only select companies that are likely to succeed, but also that you will get some level of returns from your capital? Below we’ll discuss some practical considerations that can guide your investment thesis.

DIVERSIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO

You can consider diversifying your investments based on the sectors you invest in, the financial instruments you use, your geographical focus and the stages of the companies you select. The aim of diversification is to reduce the risk of your investment, while ensuring that financial returns are maximized. In the process, it’s good to optimize your diversification efforts by mixing different strategies.

BET ON THE JOCKEY, NOT ON THE HORSE

Consider selecting potential investee companies that have a team and leader who is not only visionary, but is also agile enough to pivot and adapt to quickly-changing situations. This type of leadership will carry the business through the COVID-19 crisis by ensuring that it is responsive to current market needs, which will ensure that your investment survives.

BE SELECTIVE WITH YOUR MONEY

During these times of crisis, be very selective about where and how you invest your capital. You may want to consider how potential investee companies performed pre-crisis, and whether they already had the potential to scale. Equally importantly, consider companies that have lower burn rates and that do not spend their available cash fast. This will ensure that the capital you invest carries the company for a longer period. It might also be prudent to consider the type of currency that you will use when supplying capital to the potential investee company, as this has the potential to greatly affect your potential returns.

DON’T BE A SHARK

Though this crisis presents an opportunity (and a temptation) to undervalue companies, as sharp declines in available capital may make them more likely to accept less favorable terms, be careful not to be a predatory shark. This might seem to provide an advantage to investors, but it also has the potential to significantly affect the motivation of a company’s management team, potentially reducing performance (and returns) in the longer term.

INVEST WITH OTHER ANGELS

Co-investment during these times will give you some level of comfort in the investment you make. Look for other like-minded investors who are willing to take the risk and invest together, because if managed properly, co-investing has more potential to generate returns than investing in a deal single-handedly. That is, when more than one investor comes together to invest in the deal, there is higher likelihood of the enterprise succeeding due to the different perspectives and networks that each investor brings. Co-investing can therefore be viewed as a de-risking mechanism.

GET CREATIVE WITH DUE DILIGENCE

Since physical movement remains restricted in many markets, seek out innovative ways to build and enhance trust with the entrepreneurs you’re supporting. This can include using technology-driven solutions, such as conducting a virtual field visit tour over Zoom, and/or working with local on-the-ground partners, who may include accelerators and incubators or local consultants. Such partners will be responsible for assessing the market perception of the product/service, getting insights from customers/users of the product, and even speaking to other on-the-ground financiers who have previously evaluated the deal to understand its attractiveness. These measures will ensure that you’ve established some confidence in the investee company (and vice-versa) before you make the investment.

PLAN TO PROVIDE MORE THAN JUST MONEY

During this time of crisis, companies require more than just the money. Plan to also provide strategic support, knowledge and access to networks to your portfolio companies, to ensure that they have the tools and contacts they need to survive the pandemic. This approach is worth the time and money it will require, because without it, your capital may be used inefficiently, and you could lose your investment entirely.

HAVE REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS ON EXITS

Have an open and honest conversation with potential investees about your return and exit expectations. This is important because, during this crisis period, investment-holding periods may be longer than anticipated, which ties up capital and delays returns for all investors. You may therefore need to work harder and explore other avenues for exits, such as strategic buy-outs, in which a potential acquiring company will acquire the shares from the angel investor, based on the assumption that the acquiring company and the investee company may have synergies in the value chain, thereby increasing the acquiring company’s market share.

Intellecap has compiled more guidance around some of these practical steps here. We hope it will help angel investors navigate the many challenges – and find beneficial opportunities – during these unprecedented times.

Mumbai, Aug 7: Santosh Kumar Singh , Director Climate Energy and Agriculture, Intellecap and Ankit Gupta, AVP, Clean Energy and Climate Change, Intellecap coauthored the article ‘Climate Finance for MSME’s’ as part of our strategic content tie up with India Development Review (IDR)

The article delves around why we urgently need to make climate finance accessible for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and how we can begin to do so.

Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have a dual relationship with climate change. On one hand, they are contributing to it, and on the other, they are vulnerable to its risks.

There are a number of studies that establish the fact that MSMEs have quite a significant footprint when it comes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For example, according to a study conducted by CSTEP, in 2015-16 the informal sector (which is largely composed of MSMEs) consumed approximately 13 percent (81 million tonnes or mt) of coal and lignite, seven percent (8.5 mt) of petroleum products, and eight percent (3.3 billion cubic metres) of the natural gas supplied in India. Further, this sector emitted 110 mtCO2e (110 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent) in 2015–16, owing to fossil fuel usage.

“MSMEs are also disproportionately affected by climate risks.”

Both physical risks (damage to infrastructure and assets such as buildings and factories, as well as to people and communities), and transitional risks (policy changes, reputational impacts, and shifts in market preferences and technology) slow down or halt the operations of a MSME, leaving them in need of immediate and considerable financial support.

Given this, it is understandable why MSMEs require an urgent push towards the adoption of technologies that lower their emission footprints and reduce their vulnerability to climate change. Climate finance can help MSMEs make this transition. However, this has remained elusive to a large number of eligible enterprises.

What makes climate finance hard to access for MSMEs?

The credit gap for MSMEs in India was pegged at about USD 240 billion (about INR 16.66 lakh crore) in 2018. Considering the fact that a large number of MSMEs still struggle to get traditional finance in India, climate finance is a distant dream. Here are some factors that contribute further to the difficulty:

1. Lack of awareness

Lack of awareness about climate finance mechanisms and provisions is a major concern among MSMEs. Majority of the MSMEs in India are micro enterprises (approximately 99 percent). These enterprises are located across the country, including in remote geographies.

The lack of available information on climate finance and low financial literacy levels limit their understanding of how their businesses could benefit from climate finance. They would not know, for instance, that leveraging climate finance can help them manage some of their business risks, or about the availability of newer, cost-effective technologies that reduce carbon emissions. As a result, they would not know to go looking for these opportunities, let alone think through how they could benefit from them.

2. Formal financing structures

It has been observed that only around 16 percent of MSMEs, are being financed by the formal banking system in India. Given that climate finance in India flows mainly through formal financing structures with stringent rules and regulations such as Union Budgets, State Budgets, national climate funds (National Clean Energy Fund [NCEF] and National Adaptation Fund [NAF], for example), private climate finance (Clean Development Mechanism [CDM], for example), and international climate finance (Green Climate Fund [GCF] and Global Environment Facility [GEF], for example), this acts as another barrier.
What’s more, international climate finance institutions and facilities such as the GCF require applications from a dedicated accredited entity or a qualified financial institution working with an entity accredited by the GCF, to propose approaches that deploy financial solutions for MSMEs.

3. Extensive procedural requirements

There have been a number of mechanisms and programmes supported by the World Bank, GEF, and others, that have been successfully implemented to bring the benefits of climate finance or development finance to MSMEs, specifically to help them transition to modern, energy-efficient technologies.

However, participation of MSMEs in these schemes has been limited due to a number of factors, including the necessity of an upfront investment, procedural requirements such as preparation of detailed project reports, energy and emission audits, and so on. These are not feasible for a large number of small and micro enterprises since they don’t have the capabilities or resources to do this.

What can we do to enable climate finance flow to MSMEs?

There have been a number of attempts to reimagine climate finance and work on the challenges that exist in the current ecosystem. For example, the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises has ongoing initiatives to create awareness among MSMEs about new technologies, along with several incentives and schemes to support them.
However, the attempts so far have been inadequate, in part because most of them require MSMEs to proactively explore climate finance, which, given their informal nature and lack of technical know-how, is difficult. Here’s what can be done to change this:

1.Make the climate finance ecosystem MSME-friendly

Instead of eligible MSMEs chasing climate finance, the ecosystem should look for eligible enterprises and deliver climate finance to them. While this may sound like wishful thinking, it can actually be built on the blocks of the new initiatives currently being provided by the ministry.

The existing MSME databank can be further developed to collect data which tells MSMEs whether they are suitable for climate finance, and then guide them accordingly.

The existing Data Analytics and Technical Coordination (DATC) wing set up to support the MSME sector can be leveraged to understand the vulnerability of a given enterprise to climate risks and develop support measures for them.

Direct benefit transfers (DBT) can be leveraged to deliver subsidies and social welfare benefits to MSMEs.

2. Change eligibility requirements for MSMEs and financial institutions catering to them

The next set of measures needs to focus on the existing eligibility requirements of MSMEs for climate finance. Currently, the eligibility criteria vary from scheme to scheme and from mechanism to mechanism (GCF, NCEF, and others). For example, MSMEs cannot directly avail climate finance from GCF and other similar sources since their funding requirements are significantly smaller than what the GCF provides.

“There is also a need to have simpler processes of registration for climate finance, as well as for verification of climate benefits.”

Currently, both these serve as deterrents for MSMEs because of their inability to invest upfront in these processes.

The other requirement is to have a dedicated climate finance facility for non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs) catering to MSMEs. Financial institutions access climate finance from GCF or other such sources and then deliver it onwards. This does not work for MSMEs, as a majority of NBFCs or MFIs who are the main providers of finance to MSMEs are either not eligible (due to stringent eligibility criteria) or find it very difficult to access climate finance.

Thus, eligibility requirement of financial institutions delivering climate finance need to have specific provisions for NBFCs and MFIs that enable them to avail of climate finance themselves. (It is worth mentioning here that climate finance often has restriction of exclusivity on its use, so the financial institutions delivering it have to showcase that the pool of capital that they have accessed from these sources is only being used for financing projects or interventions that have climate benefits.)

There is need for processes and mechanisms so that not just MSMEs, but the financial institutions catering to MSMEs are also able to leverage climate finance in order to build a MSME-friendly financing ecosystem.

3. Reimagine the role of financing institutions

Overall, there is a need to develop a mechanism that enables climate finance to reach MSMEs proactively. For this, there is a need to revisualise the role of financing institutions that cater to the MSME sector. SIDBI, NABARD, and IREDA (for green finance) have been primarily focusing on direct financing or refinancing of loans to NBFCs and other financial institutions catering to MSMEs, which are quite insufficient considering the total credit requirement of MSMEs.

These institutions (or probably new ones) should focus on unlocking more capital to the MSME sector by first loss default guarantees or other risk mitigation measures that enable more credit to the MSME sector. As we bring more formal credit to them, enabling climate finance will become easier.

“As we bring more formal credit to them, enabling climate finance will become easier.”

Furthermore, there is a need to build the capacity of financial institutions and include them in the process of origination, application, and delivery of climate finance. This requires building their capacity and providing them easier access to climate finance as well. They should also be leveraged to serve as a guide to the MSMEs. Financial institutions can easily identify potential climate finance beneficiaries by having a few additional questions in the loan applications; they can use this to guide their MSMEs through the process.

Financial institutions catering to MSMEs are the most critical stakeholders in enabling climate finance for MSMEs, and it is almost impossible to think of an effective climate finance ecosystem for MSMEs if we do not leverage them optimally.

1 Billion People Live in Informal Settlements Worldwide: Here are Seven Key Challenges They’re Facing During COVID-19 : The article in Next Billion by Margaret Nakunza, Associate, Intellecap Africa was based on the AVPA and Sankalp Dialogues webinar series, which explores how the business and development sectors are responding to the pandemic.

AVPA, in partnership with Sankalp Dialogues, kicked off a webinar series in April, to find out what various organizations across the continent are doing to #CrushTheCurve .
The virtual convening is ongoing, and it aims to:

-Share examples of how program implementers are responding to the outbreak, ranging from preparedness to mitigation

-Hear from voices on the ground and discuss how best to address upcoming challenges and reduce their impact

-Share solutions that can be easily embraced and implemented effectively, efficiently and quickly

Mumbai, June 4, 2020:  COVID-19 has brought an end to the ‘greed is good’ era. There will now be a new economic world order in which the only thing that will matter is an inclusive and sustainable world.

Impact is the new mainstream says Vineet Rai, Founder and Chairman, Aavishkaar Group as he writes for IDR Online

As the challenges of COVID-19 unravel and ravage humanity across the globe, one recurring discourse has been to use this disruption to reimagine the economic architecture. Is it possible to convert the pandemic into a launch pad for a more humane, inclusive, and sustainable world?

The idea of impact investing is one such powerful idea, conceived to challenge the hegemony of greed and the desire to maximise returns at all costs, by taming capital into a more humane, sustainable, and inclusive tool for change.

In my journey of two decades chasing this dream of making impact a real alternative to mainstream global capital pools, I have learnt that money is a complex subject. And because most global capital is regulated by government (but not controlled by it), I’ve also realised that it is nearly impossible to tame global capital’s natural instinct.

But the disruptions caused by COVID-19 give me hope that, despite these limitations, impact investing may have a major role to play over the next decade in reimagining a new world—a world with no hunger, no poverty, and no inequity.

Commercial capital is driven by greed

The global capital pool is roughly USD 300 trillion and its primary objective is to maximise returns within the boundaries of identified risks. Capital markets work on mandates, and so far, they have focused almost entirely on this single parameter—maximising returns.

Over time, there have been significant causes that have knocked on the doors of capital—from philanthropic asks to help the vulnerable and marginalised, to demands to balance the reward equation to avoid concentration of capital, to calls for stopping investment in extractive industries such as oil, mining, and fossil fuels. However, none of these appeals have influenced the mandate of capital in any significant manner.

“Some among the affluent try to make an impact through philanthropy, but the contribution pales against the destruction caused by the ‘greed is good’ approach.”

The disdain for these asks is not because of ignorance of the risks that arise from social inequity or climate change. It is because the leadership of capital markets probably believes that the giant machine of capital allocation has little to do with these asks. They believe that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and philanthropic activities is where these demands should be directed, since capital markets must focus on an unadulterated vision of return at all costs.

Not surprisingly, this leadership represents the privileged and powerful. While they accept in hushed tones the downsides of this approach for the poor and marginalised, they consider them as collateral damage to the holy quest for capital multiplication.

An equally important factor is that while the world of capital plans for long-term risk management, its incentives as a global collective are more aligned to quarter-on-quarter performance. Long-term-ism is a philosophy to pontificate, not to act. While those who are conscious among the affluent do try to make an impact using personal wealth through philanthropy, the contribution pales against the destruction being wheeled in by the mainstream ‘greed is good’ approach.

The idea of impact investing

Impact investing—an idea mooted at the turn of century in India and the USA—believes that one can do good to do well. The idea took some time to find a toehold in the world of capital—the early adopters and leaders were focused on demonstrating that making impact has powerful potential to deliver returns. One of the goals of impact investing was also to wean away large pools of commercial capital from its single minded pursuit on maximising return, and instead deploy it to build businesses that were inclusive, sustainable, and impactful, while delivering returns.

What counts as impact

During its early days, the idea was seen as utopian, and marginalised as a fringe innovation, as an alternate to philanthropy, rather than a challenge to the hegemony of commercial capital and its bottom-line pursuit. This has changed over the last decade. Today, with USD 500 billion allocated to impact investment, some of the largest aggregators of capital are now committed to this idea and see it as an important tool of change.

As one of the early messengers, I have often wondered if commercial capital has simply co-opted the idea of impact investing to make sure it does not challenge the capital hegemony, by taking away the focus from its true potential. Because, while it has pushed people towards measuring the outcomes of their investment, it has not changed the key architecture of how capital is deployed.

Mainstreaming impact investing

Impact investing has the potential to disrupt the global economic order and threaten the established and deeply entrenched world order. And the best way to neutralise a great idea and to preserve the status quo, is to co-opt the idea and mainstream it. Impact investing as an idea is therefore being co-opted by the capital aggregators, so that in the guise of numbers and outcomes, its soul can be trampled.

“Today, the language of the impact investing is no different from the language of mainstream capital.”

The idea of ‘doing good to do well’ is being replaced by ‘doing good and doing well’, thereby separating the impact from the process of capital allocation. This allows for minor tweaks in the current economic architecture and lets us continue to do what the capital world has done for ages, and be seen as impactful and sustainable.

As we stand today, most people who entered impact investing believe that it allows you to have your cake and eat it too. That it is possible to change the world while satisfying your greed. By co-opting the word impact, the idea of change has been diluted and compromised. Today, the language of the impact investing is no different from the language of mainstream capital.

COVID-19 offers us hope that things will change

To say that COVID-19 is a pandemic and a health hazard is obvious. But it is also a virus that has democratised fear, as it ruthlessly impacts everyone, including the rich and the powerful. Ministers, bureaucrats, CEOs, fund managers on one side, and nation states with powerful armies and some of the highest per-capita incomes on the other, have all found themselves tamed by the onslaught of a virus weighing just a few micrograms.

With the wheels of economies coming to a grinding halt, the managers of capital have seen a decimation of wealth as never before. It has hit those who never thought that such risks could manifest themselves and result in such destruction for them. Moreover, they have no idea as to how deep, long, and damaging this could be going forward.

‘Greed is good’ is dead

The privileged minority that controls the USD 300 trillion capital pool, which has always looked at risk and return as a continuum, is faced with an undefined risk that destroys value. It is not about maximising returns anymore, but protecting value. Can they protect the USD 300 trillion from losing its value? For the first time, it is not a question of earning less returns on the capital but actually losing it, and therefore, the focus is on the return of capital than return on capital.

COVID-19 has demonstrated to the money managers that risks that seemed like theoretical constructs by scientists, or showed up as glaciers melting in Antarctica, or rising sea levels in Southeast Asia, can strike and paralyse the global economy. The pandemic has brought the unsustainability of the outside world inside the boardroom of the rich and powerful. There is fear now.

Resilience trumps return

If greed is dead, what then is the new world order? It is one where resilience trumps return, where survival and sustainability of capital far outweighs the return that capital can generate. Given this, the best-case scenario for anyone is ‘resilience with return’, since ‘return at all costs’ is not an option anymore. This requires asset managers to take a long-term view of their actions on the society, before they take a view on the immediate return.

This is exactly what impact investing offers. It encourages the world of capital to embrace sustainable investing for good returns. It seeks capital to be invested in a way that uplifts people and society, sustainably.

Impact is the new mainstream

Given COVID-19 and its fallouts, mainstream capital now has to mimic impact investing and look, feel, and act like it is making impact, rather than the other way round.

In the new economic world order, the only thing that will matter is an inclusive and sustainable world. And when that happens, capital, companies, and leaders will look to build businesses that further equity, inclusiveness, and sustainability as a core strategy and seek shareholder returns that draw from this.

This new world order will also bring about other fundamental changes

First, capital will have to face a much higher level of accountability and scrutiny on the idea of impact, inclusion, and sustainability, and it may not be enough for a business to just claim impact. The idea of preparing a balance sheet and developing an accounting standard that takes into account the impact on sustainability will be pursued with same vigour over the next decade, as were accounting standards in the last century.

Second, we will require significant technological interventions, because impact investing by nature takes place in remote and inaccessible regions, where one can only work through technology. Digital transformation in the space of impact will be one of the most far-reaching tectonic shifts that we will see in the near future.

“The quest for resilience will force the world of capital to replace the idea of greed with sustainability, inclusion, and impact.”

Globally, we will also see a shift in geopolitics—from the hegemony of one or two, to several blocks of power. And even though it has become a cliché now, I think oil is a passé, and we will see investments in greener energy. Climate, energy, environment, and sustainability—these will become buzzwords of the future. There will be new roles for technology, new models of sharing, and new sectors—health, water and sanitation, hygiene, and so on—will lead the way capital is deployed.

Overall, the quest for resilience will force the world of capital to replace the idea of greed with sustainability, inclusion, and impact.

Change will come because it is about self-preservation for the rich

The world has seven billion people but very few control capital. And while 99.9 percent of humanity may forget the trauma of the COVID-19 crisis few years down the line, the few who control global wealth—those with the money and influence—are unlikely to forget the impact of this pandemic.

The world will change not because people will remember the trauma caused by the migrants walking; it will change because the virus has permeated the fear right inside the boardrooms of the largest companies, and the family offices of the richest people. The changes will come as self-preservation for the rich becomes a priority, and global shifts only take place when the powerful are fearful.

To read the full article in IDR Online Click Here  

24th February, Mumbai: Economic Times Online recently featured an article on ‘Mainstreaming Gender lens capital solutions for women-led SMEs’ which was authored by Trina Roy, Associate, Intellecap.

The article largely talks about how Gender Lens Investing (GLI) as an approach to promote social and/or economic empowerment of women, in addition to financial returns has gained traction in the past years.

In the article Trina talks about how India currently has more than 8 million women-led businesses that represent 13.76 % of all businesses in the country as estimated in the Sixth Economic Census. With improved education outcomes, targeted interventions by the government and private sector, and other socio-economic factors; women entrepreneurship has indeed witnessed a rise over the last couple of years. States such Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra have the highest share of women entrepreneurs.

Applying a gender lens to budgetary allocations, the government as an impetus to promote women led entrepreneurship has taken certain steps. These have included measures such as expanding the Women SHG interest subvention programme to all districts, making one woman in every SHG eligible for a loan up to 1 lakh under the MUDRA Scheme, among others.

According to the author, while these are welcome moves by the government to ease the access to finance challenge – an acute challenge faced by women entrepreneurs, the time is right to initiate conversation about bigger reforms.

She opines that, Gender Lens Investing (GLI), an approach to promote social and/or economic empowerment of women, in addition to financial returns has gained traction in the past years. Adopting the GLI approach, investors seek to channel debt and equity to businesses that create positive gender outcomes through various strategies. Some of these include supporting women as entrepreneurs, investing in development of products and services benefiting women, and channeling capital in businesses having a high share of women employees and in their value chains.

For India to unlock the potential of women entrepreneurship, concerted strategies to catalyze GLI and develop effective financing products for MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) in particular will be critical. In this article we explore how the GLI philosophy is applied to supporting women entrepreneurs, specifically in the SME sector.

Elaborating on it further, she says that supporting women led SMES through targeted demand driven financing approaches and products lies at the heart of transforming the capital access scenario for women entrepreneurs in India. Depending on the type of scale and sector of an enterprise, multiple approaches can be explored.

First, after assessing the sector and sub sector category of MSMEs, tailored financing products combined with capacity building support can be developed. Majority of women led enterprises being subsistence businesses do not typically attract capital from investors or banks. Many of these women-led SMEs in India operate in sectors such as textile and handicrafts, food processing, beauty and wellness and are overwhelmingly concentrated in the micro and small scale business segment. Their particular needs are significantly different from high growth businesses to which the traditional start up ecosystem caters or steady businesses to which banks provide capital support. Bearing in mind their business models and market needs, sector or cluster specific financing products that provide patient capital aligned to growth rates and pay back periods would be instrumental to spur growth.

Second, blended financing products combining different types of capital – debt, equity and grant can also support women-led SMEs in underserved geographies or in sectors with low profit margins. With flexible capital, blended financing products reduce capital costs and can be leveraged effectively to overcome the problem of low returns and high risks; concerns that often limit traditional private sector investments. As an investment structure mixing concessionary and for-profit capital, the Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility (WEOF) is a remarkable example of an effective blended finance product deploying capital to a segment often overlooked by financial institutions and global investors.

Third, innovative structuring of gender financing through development impact bonds, guarantee bonds, soft loans can also be explored to meet the needs of women entrepreneurs in the MSME sector. These serve as effective mediums to bridge social goals and economic returns. Experiments with development impact bonds and outcome bonds are at its nascent stages and have been promising in areas like health and education in India presently.

How would the DIB work? Here she suggests that adapting similar structuring to create a gender focused impact bond would channel private capital toward women entrepreneurship and augment the Government of India’s efforts to promote it. DIBs bring together the public, private and philanthropic sectors and align their interests towards a common set of objectives. Commercial investors pump in capital in a DIB, and the DIB in turn on-lends growth capital at low interest rates to a target women-led SME segment. Over the agreed tenure period, women-led SME repay back the capital with the given interest to the DIB. An independent agency monitors the outcome in terms of scale achieved by the SMEs and on its basis, a donor(s) and/or the government makes a payment to the DIB. Commercial investors are paid back by the DIB using the capital repayment by SMEs and the outcome based payments from the donors or government.

Other experiments including guarantee fund, soft loans, and interest rate subventions are viable alternatives to consider as well. To bring about a paradigm shift, efforts to build capacity and ease capital access must work simultaneously. Serious efforts by both the government and private sector are necessary to steer and mainstream Gender Lens Investing for women entrepreneurs in India.

In her conclusion she says that going forward, building a strong evidence case for GLI will be an imperative first step. Supporting data-backed research to provide insight into the performance and potential of such SMEs is crucial. Additionally, mapping stakeholders like investors, incubators, experts, enterprises, to identify opportunities of collaboration will strengthen its case. The current measures targeted towards women in SMEs provides the initial boost and is a larger signal for other ecosystem players, specifically the private sector to come forward and build on this momentum.

Saturday 22nd February , Mumbai: Aavishkaar Group was recently featured in Business Standard in a story tilted ‘ Early mover advantage’ when Vineet Rai Founder and Chairman in an exclusive interview with Anjuli Bharagava as part of ‘Lunch with BS’ spoke about how high risk appetite combined with strong survival instinct is the recipe for success.

The entire interview with Business Standard :

In the early 2000s, when the world was yet to wake up to the promise of impact investing, Vineet Rai was registering a firm with the princely sum of Rs.5,00O to raise funds to transform rural India. The following year, he borrowed a lakh from his wife and registered an advisory com¬pany to help new entrepreneurs. Around the same time, in the United States, Jacqueline Novogratz set up Acumen, first as a fund and which later became a non¬profit. A year later, UK businessman turned philanthropist Sir Ronald Cohen set up Bridges Fund Management that in due course crystalised into an impact investing company.

That makes Aavishkaar group chairman Rai a pioneer in the impact investing space in India arid one of the early entrants globally. We are meeting for a long pending Dinner with BS at The Table in Mumbai’s Colaba area. Without wasting time we order a SoBo salad that we intend to share. Rai opts for shrimp tacos and a diet coke and I order a roasted almond tortellini. The term “impact investing”, he explains, was coined many years later —at a meeting at Lake Como, Italy, in 2008 by 10 members of the impact community. Would he then qualify as the “father of Impact investing” in India like his mentor Basix’s Vijay Mahajan, who is ofetn called the father of micro-finance? He laughs off the suggestion, adding that would be too laudatory.

Rai was 29 when the idea that a blend of talent and high risk capital could trans¬form rural India gripped him. He present¬ed his idea before the board of the Gujarat government non-profit he was CEO of only to be told that venture capital was barely available in Indian cities, let alone raising such capital for rural India.

Meanwhile, a small group of Indians based in Singapore had heard of Rai and sent him a ticket to visit them (Rai couldn’t afford the tickets for what would be his first-ever visit outside of India). They hosted a dinner of SO local Indians, sat through his presentation and a bunch of them committed some money to his plans, not expecting to get it back.

A bull in a china shop and keen to prove his theory, Rai returned to India, quit his job — to his wife’s horror — and set the ball rolling. He had earlier helped Vikram Akula in building SKS Microfinance as a friend and consultant and had become quite familiar with the micro-finance landscape in India. But the going wasn’t easy for Aavishkaar in its early days and by end-2003, Rai was struggling to keep his head above water. That’s when Mahajan pointed out that Rai was in a unique position — he knew more about micro finance than most people in the equity space did and he knew more about equity than most in the micro-finance space did. So why doesn’t he just marry the two?

He followed the advise and worked “30 hours out of 24” with his small team of equally committed people. At that time, Intellecap was assisting two billionaire Kiwi brothers, Richard and Christopher Chandler, find the right opportunity to invest in India’s micro-finance industry. Impressed with his handling of the deal, the brothers offered to pick up a majority stake in Rai’s business. Rai refused. “At the time, Intellecap had Rs. 1 crore in spare cash and I thought I was the richest man in the world,” he says. That apart, he also knew there were no free lunches and was scepti¬cal of the strings that might be attached. The Chandler brothers were not accus¬tomed to taking a “no” for an answer and persuaded Rai to sell 40 per cent in Intellecap for $8million. The year was 2007.

Our dinner is over and Rai orders a cap¬puccino. We are by now in 2011 and the pressure on Rai to find a way to return the money invested by the Chandlers was building up. So he took another mad gam¬ble, against the advice of all. He went ahead and created Intellegrow (an NBFC) and bought Arohan, a micro-finance com¬pany, which he got cheap at the peak of the micro-finance industry crisis.

As they say, fortune favors the brave. The Aavishkaar fund became one of the first investors in several early stage, highly successful MFIs of the day including Equitas, Basix and Utkarsh. Arohan grew by leaps and bounds and is the fifth largest MFI in India today.

Rai starts talking about a mind-blow¬ingly complex restructuring of the group that I tune out of and by the time I catch him again the holding company Aavishkaar Group has been born. The group sold stake in the holding company twice, raising over $100 million in two years (part of the money was used to buy back stake from the Chandlers), taking Rai and his associates’ share in the group down to just over Si per cent.

I interrupt to point out that many in the impact space have questioned his decision to venture into Africa and South East Asia, arguing that he’s bitten off more than he can chew. “Can we go wrong? Yes, we can. But if I don’t take risks, we die,” argues Rai.

If some describe Rai as a risk-taker, others say he is ambitious. The group today has Rs.8,O00 crore in assets under management, and by 2025, he aims to be well entrenched in the international market, with assets under management to the tune of Rs.50,0O0 crore. He’s also under pressure again to create exit options for his present set of investors.

I switch to a broader debate: Over the years, there has been criticism globally that the impact sector is seeking to take a moral —high ground and make other businesses appear soul—less. This lot argues that every business will have some impact and that the impact community comprises wolves in sheepskin. So does he see himself as a messiah for India’s poor? Rai holds no grand illusions. The impact sector isn’t really a “Florence Nightingale” and can— not solve the more complex problems that society faces. “If a child is dying of starvation or a baby girl is killed, what can I do?” he asks. He can only solve problems that lend themselves to a viable business model. Also, he’s in it because this is what he likes doing, not because he can “change the world”.

That more or less confirms my assessment of Rai —that he is grounded. He lives in Mumbai’s west¬ern suburb of Kandivali although lie can easily afford a fancier address iii the city. I also see him asking his driver to call it a day even before we finish dinner because he is concerned it might be too late for him to find trans¬port to get home.

We have been talking over three hours now. As we wind up, I tell him that he appears to be enjoying the perpetual— pressure-cooker work environment. “An entrepreneur should always remain under pressure or he will die,” he says simply. He just hopes many more are left better off at the end of this over—wrought journey.

Women make essential contribution to the development of agriculture and rural economies in emerging countries. On average, women make up 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, ranging from 20% in Latin America to 50% in Eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Further, in SSA women contribute 60-80% of the region’s food. Yet despite their importance to the sector, women continue to face specific constraints that limit their productivity. They have lower access to agricultural inputs and farming knowledge, earn lower returns on the inputs used, and face gender-based distortions in the product markets. Similarly, women are also disadvantaged by other gendered norms and practices, which result in fairly rigid and unequal divisions of labor both at the household level and the marketplace. Women’s participation in the sector is thus limited to value chain nodes and crops with lower economic return than men. The resulting gender gaps in agricultural productivity can be substantial, ranging from 13% in Uganda and 16% in Tanzania, to 28% in Malawi.

So what would happen if we closed the gender gap in the sector and women accessed the same productivity resources as men? Research shows that yields could increase by 20-30%. In Rwanda for instance, closing the agricultural gender gap would lead to about a 19% increase in crop production, which would add $419 million to the country’s GDP. Closing the gap could bring 180 million Africans out of hunger, and lift millions of families and communities out of poverty. As such, innovative solutions to the constraints facing women need to be explored. Below, we discuss a number of initiatives that are developing ground-breaking solutions to support the region’s female farmers.

ENHANCING ACCESS TO CREDIT FOR WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE

Women’s access to inputs – fertilizers, pesticides, hybrid seed, wage labour and machinery – is highly influenced by access to credit. But on a general level, the agricultural sector is considered high-risk for most traditional lenders; lending to the sector is thus highly collateralized and follows stringent underwriting processes. Despite the importance of the sector, lending has remained relatively low at only 2.4%, 3.6% and 3.7% of total loan portfolios in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, respectively. And this number is significantly less for women, due to their limited ownership of assets and land used as collateral, and to the lack of banking and credit data about female borrowers (only 27% of women in sub-Saharan Africa were estimated to have a financial institution account in 2017). In addition, financial decision-making powers in some countries continue to lie with men as a result of gender-biased and retrogressive regulations and women’s low literacy levels.

Nevertheless, women do undertake various transactions, creating data points that can be leveraged to generate credit scores. To that end, a number of players are already working to digitize women’s transactions. The Aga Khan Foundation, for example, has been working to digitize the operations of women savings groups in Tanzania. TruTrade purchases produce from women farmers in Kenya and Uganda and pays them directly through their mobile phones, which not only helps build a digital profile but also gives them security and control over their finances.

Some companies are even developing financial products customized for women. For example, Cherehani Africa is targeting rural women in Kenya through their “Kilimo (Swahili for agriculture) loans,” which provide subsidized credit to finance high-yield seeds, pesticides, green house kits, high-breed dairy cattle, fisheries and poultry. The company also connects farmers to input suppliers through their online platform.

OPTIMIZING WOMEN FARMERS’ AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

Across the agricultural value chain, production is one of the most female-driven stages. However, women not only face the challenge of unequal access to a variety of productive inputs – fertilizer, seed, contemporary farm implements and paid labour – but also achieve unequal returns on those inputs, which limits their output. To help address this, Agrinfo, a female-led aerial drone surveillance enterprise in Tanzania, is working with women in the country to identify their crop cultivation needs and provide solutions that will reduce pest infestation and diseases.

FACILITATING GENDER-RESPONSIVE EXTENSION SERVICES

Knowledge and training in farming techniques is also key to enhancing the productivity of the inputs used – and ultimately boosting the efficiency of the broader sector. Yet women farmers receive less than 10% of agriculture extension services, limiting their ability to apply good agronomic practices – and low literacy levels are considered a major barrier to their use of these services. There are several innovative approaches that aim to address this, however. For instance, Digital Green uses a video-based approach to deliver extension services to women in India and Ethiopia; and the Talking Book audio device (established through a partnership between Amplio, the Mennonite Economic Development Associates and Literacy Bridge Ghana) is enhancing the delivery of practical and easy-to-learn extension services in Ghana.

INCREASING POST-HARVEST VALUE FOR WOMEN FARMERS

Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 30-50% of its total agricultural produce post-harvest, due to poor storage and transportation techniques. In many parts of the continent, women play a significant role in post-harvest activities such as drying, storing, cleaning and processing food. However, efforts to reduce post-harvest losses have tended to focus on technological solutions that women may not have the opportunity or resources to utilize. In response, Claphijo Enterprises in Tanzania is helping women make use of surplus or unsold mangoes by providing cheap communal drying and dehydration facilities. In addition, some of this dried produce is bought from the women and sold under the company’s brand, “Mama’s Flavors.”

CREATING MARKET AND VALUE CHAIN LINKAGES

Agricultural commodity trading has traditionally been male-dominated, with factors such as limited freedom of movement, and low access to infrastructure and information networks preventing women from participating in the marketing of produce, both locally and internationally. Women thus often rely on either their husbands or middlemen, who collect produce from their farms. Further, social norms require women to meet household food needs first before selling the surplus. And women also typically receive lower returns on their produce, because of gender biases in the product markets. All of these factors make it difficult for women to professionalize their farming work. To address these challenges, TruTrade provides information on prices and markets to women farmers in Kenya and Uganda, and directly links them to the buyers. GROOTS Kenya is also providing capacity building for women in Kenya, to help them exploit various market opportunities.

Though the solutions discussed above are exciting, for any sector to thrive, this sort of strengthening should be done at an ecosystem level – including both women farmers and development organizations. That’s the focus of organizations like African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), whose Gender in Agribusiness Investments programme incubates innovations and enterprises built with the intention of helping to bridge the gender gap in African agriculture. It’s encouraging to see the emergence of these – and other – innovative organizations focused on supporting women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Their work promises to have a major impact on the continent.

Out on the stands now*

Arbind Gupta from Business India attended the 11th Sankalp Global Summit 2019 and covered the pioneering foray in Circular Apparel with Intellecap’s Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF).

The 2 page detailed story in Business India Jan 2020 Issue, now out on the stands, captures a detailed overview on the textile industry with respect to the challenges and the need for sustainable fashion as a practice, capturing the launch of the 1st CAIF conclave, views and opinions from key spokesperson like Group Founder Vineet Rai, Intellecap CAIF Director Stephanie Bauer, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail’s MD Ashish Dikshit and Chief Sustainability Officer Dr. Naresh Tyagi and the designers present during the summit

The textile and apparel industry is currently passing through a phase where it is finding itself in a quandary as it struggles to find a balance between its mainstream targets of productivity and production and sustainability goals. the current linear system of production, distribution and usage of t&a is not sustainable as there is little regard for environment impact. as a result, the industry is the second-greatest polluter globally.

Over 20 per cent of industrial water pollution is due to garment manufacturing. globally, 80 per cent of textile waste generated is not recycled and often sent to landfills or incinerated. in fact, the industry is responsible for over eight per cent of global pollution. with the growing economy and changing demographics, the consumption of textiles and clothing has gone up by more than 60 per cent today as compared to that in 2000 and this has significantly aggravated the whole situation. in the past 15 years, textile production has almost doubled.

Experts are of the view that the current take-make-dispose approach does not only adversely impact the environment and society, but also the future business of the t&a industry. while there are a few sporadic interventions across the value chain in order to address the issues and make the value chain more sustainable, a concerted effort is missing.

To address these issues in a more holistic manner as also set goals and achieve them in a time-bound manner, an industry-led platform – Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF) – has been put in place recently in India. started in 2018 and formally launched in November 2019 at Sankalp Forum’s 11th Global Forum in Mumbai, CAIF is an initiative of Intellecap (an advisory arm of the Aavishkaar Group) in partnership with Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail and the Doen foundation, a dutch foundation supporting initiatives in the field of culture and cohesion and in the field of a green and inclusive economy.

“We at the Aavishkaar group pioneered the idea of impact driven sustainable investing in India, Africa, and South-east asia. as we look at the textile sector, and specially the apparel sector from the lens of circular economy and sustainability, we see the need for innovative ideas and start-ups to nurture these innovators, we need a flourishing ecosystem in addition to capital. through Intellecap and CAIF, we hope to contribute to this process and see transformation sweeping through the indian apparel industry,” says Vineet Rai, Founder of Aavishkaar Group, which is one of the world’s largest impact investors, currently managing assets worth about $1 billion, across India, Africa and Southeast Asia.

The Aavishkaar group was founded in 2002 with just $100 and with a vision to catalyse development in India’s under-served regions. it identifies capable entrepreneurs, provides them with capital, supplements it with a nurturing environment and helps build sustainable enterprises. with over 5,000 employees in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya and USA, the Group’s financial ecosystems include equity funds, venture debt vehicle, microfinance and advisory business including investment banking.

“At CAIF, our mission is to build capabilities and the ecosystem needed to create a circular t&a industry. we are building the ecosystem in order to search, seed, support and scale up circular innovations in India. we look to leverage the Aavishkaar Group’s approach of creating impact at scale through providing access to capital, knowledge, networks throughout an inventor’s journey,” says Stefanie Bauer, Director, Intellecap CAIF.

Says Ashish Dikshit, Managing Director, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail ltd (ABFRL), “We are pleased to partner with Intellecap to accelerate the sustainable fashion concept through CAIF and build an industry level platform for a circular textile ecosystem. we intend to bring forth ideas and innovations to add more strength to our pioneering work around sustainability. the association with Intellecap will help us create, collaborate and mainstream the conversation around the circular economy and sustainable fashion“.

Dr. Naresh Tyagi, Chief Sustainability Officer, ABFRL believes that fragmented efforts so far have not yielded much result and there is a need to bring all these on a single platform like CAIF so that a coordinated and cohesive effort can be carried out towards building a conducive ecosystem for creating a circular industry. “The textile industry has been a laggard so far and now there is a need to catch up and join other industries towards building a strong base for creating a formidable circular t&a sector in the country,” adds Tyagi.

CAIF will leverage its digital ecosystem to ease discovery, drive innovations, and collaboration and support partners in identifying opportunities. the platform has formulated a roadmap that will guide one to the goals and targets it intend to achieve.

Currently, only one per cent of the material used to produce clothing is recycled. going forward, caif members will make significant efforts to source sustainably, use alternative and recycled material. concerted efforts will be made to bring down the level of hazardous chemicals, materials and harmful substances. caif members will also make considerable effort to reduce textile waste and eliminate single use plastics. Besides, there will be attempts to use renewable material in the production process.

In the past one year CAIF has generated an encouraging response from over 500 stakeholders that include textile manufacturers, retailers and brands, government agencies and multilaterals, enablers, entrepreneurs and innovators as also experts and academia. reliance industries, aditya Birla retail and fashion, h&m, raymond, landmark group, arvind and welspun are among the manufacturers/brands, while unido, world Bank, undp and nabard are among the government and global agencies who have extended their support to this platform.

Enablers include the international apparel federation, doen foundation, fashion for good, Beyond capital fund, sustainable earth foundation, c&a foundation and circle economy, whereas infini chains, trust trace, boheco, graviky labs, re:newcell, fibrelabs, dimpora, indidye, Kiabza, style lend and fairtrunk are among the enablers who have joined the caif initiative. imperial college london, national institute of design, sasmira, national institute of fashion technology and ‘good on you’ represent the experts and academia community.

Dealing with textile waste is one of the major challenges faced by the industry at present and calls for concerted efforts on the part of producers as well as consumers. as per an estimate, the clothing industry creates upwards of 150 billion pieces of clothing each year and close to 15 per cent of fabric ends up on cutting floors during production leading to wastage even during this phase.

Today, we consume 60 per cent more clothing than we did just a few decades ago, with average lifecycles of 3-6 months for a new garment. while consumption is increasing due to increase in purchasing power and decrease in prices, unchecked consumption contributes to the creation of close to 39 million tonnes of postconsumer waste each year. and only one per cent of the material used to produce textile & clothing is recycled across the globe and put back into the system. upwards of 70 per cent of all discarded clothing is sent to landfills, of which nearly 95 per cent can be recycled.

It has been observed that innovations exist to extend and shift the end-ofuse of a garment or a piece of fabric but they are often not available at scale and face challenges with blended fabrics. another big challenge faced is how we can strengthen the industry’s risk management and consumer engagement through increased supply chain traceability. “The fragmented nature of the supply chain, the current lack of information across the value chain, and changing consumer demand call for transparency solutions. in fact, 50 per cent of 150 brands surveyed recently have no visibility of their chain beyond Tier I ,” adds Bauer.

The recent transparency index published by fashion revolution indicates that a review of 200 major brands and retailers’ public disclosures gave companies an average of 21 per cent for the transparency of their supply chain. only two per cent of the 250 brands surveyed scored higher than 60 per cent on the transparency index. on the other hand, today, over 51 per cent of consumers are beginning to demand transparency and sustainability related product information. experts believe that while transparency is important, the fragmented nature of the supply chain also demands greater control through traceability and data management. Blockchain has started to transform the way information flows across supply chains due to the unique ability to create a physical-digital link between goods and their digital identities. this offers opportunities for a more transparent supply chain. all said and done, there is a strong belief that transition towards a circular economy will require a new level of collaboration and alignment. and moreover, there will be a need for concrete collaborative commitments on the part of the industry to make the entire initiative a success story.