 This is the climate and gender in Asia panel. And I'm really excited about this, not only because these women, as you will find out, are complete rock stars in what they do, but gender and climate are both topics that are near and dear to my heart. And I think we all know women are disproportionately affected by a lot of things, including climate change and plastics pollution. And they're also very entrepreneurial and a big part of the potential solutions to that. So we have an amazing panel here today. And what I loved about our prep call is that you all know each other, and you work together all the time. So it's a very collaborative spirit. And I think our panel will continue that spirit. And they're building ecosystems, supporting women entrepreneurs on the front lines of climate change, and they're also mobilizing investors across Asia. So I will quickly introduce you each and then let you introduce yourself in your work more fully. So starting from my left, we have Priyatha Chadi, who is co-founder and chairman of VILGRO Philippines. Ragula Shag, who is the founding partner, was circulate capital in Singapore. And Ayaka Matsuno, who leads the Gender Investment and Innovation Program at Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan. Let me know if I mispronounce anything. And so we're going to dive into some of the challenges that they're seeing and the ways that they're addressing some of those challenges to build a support system for women and an ecosystem of social entrepreneurship and also investment across Asia. But before we jump in, I mean, I feel like any discussion about gender, I would be remiss to not mention a big champion of women entrepreneurs and gender lens investing, which is Suzanne Beagle, who passed away recently, very recently, unfortunately. But I think her 2X initiative lives on and her legacy. And I know a lot of you are working with 2X, and we actually are partnering with them as well at Impact Alpha. Just to say a word about Impact Alpha, by the way, I'm editorial director there, and I lead our climate coverage, and we are a media site and a newsletter that covers the impact investing world globally and across all sorts of sectors. So my love is kind of cross-sectoral, intersectional type of discussion. So with that, why don't you each introduce yourself and your work and maybe kind of situate it in which region of Asia that you're working in. I can go first. Hi, everybody. My name is Priya. I'm based in Manila in the Philippines, which is where I've lived over the last seven years. I founded or co-founded an incubator that supports early-stage entrepreneurs who are addressing social and climate issues. Over the last three years, we've really thought about and very intentionally worked on adding a gender lens, or we call ourselves a gender-smart incubator. And that work has led to the creation of many other sort of initiatives. But I would say I describe myself as an ecosystem builder, really focused on the missing middle, sort of helping entrepreneurs cross that value of debt. And I think the challenges that we see today in the ecosystem, even though it's evolved globally, is that gender, yes, but not in isolation. It is if you're not in the big cities, if you're not speaking English very well, if you're not making fancy pitch decks, it becomes very difficult to unlock capital. And so that's really what we are focused on. 80% of our work is in the Philippines, 20% more regionally in Southeast Asia. So we also have an investment arm, which is really bringing investors together. And we also have a platform for women entrepreneurs, really focused on unlocking capital. And these are the areas where I've collaborated with these fabulous women next to me as well. So that's very quickly about me. Well, thank you. Good afternoon. First and foremost, thanks so much for coming. And it's such a lovely group. So I feel quite comfortable. My name is Rekula. I'm based in Singapore. I am, for those who may not know, I work for Circular Capital and Circular Capital is an impact-driven and investment manager focusing on the circular economy. We invest in innovation and supply chain to prevent plastic leaking into the ocean. We do that by providing equity to entrepreneurs in South and Southeast Asia. But also most recently we started actually working on in Latin America, Caribbean as well. And often when we talk about plastic, people may not understand what it has to do with climate. But when we look at the greenhouse gas emission, while we talk about just transition and energy transition, but actually the production and consumption of goods makes up 49% of the entire footprint we have on the planet. So plastic and packaging is a big part of it. And therefore when we talk about climate and climate change, preventing plastic being burned or leaking into the ocean, dissolving or ending up in our bodies is a big contributor to the emission reduction. Now everybody also usually associates environmental aspects to investing in ocean plastic prevention. But there actually is also a big social aspect to it and the S is really important. Why is the S so important? And here comes also the gender aspect is that women play a key part in the supply chain of material recovery, plastic recycling and waste management. In some of the cities, for example in Bhuna in India, 90% of the material recovered is recovered by women. And generally the majority of plastic recovered and recycled in the world is actually recovered by the informal sector where women play a key role to contribute to the income of families. But women, so are the consumers, right? They have quite some power in consumption. They make decisions. Women are at the head of household. So women are also very critical in changing the mindset of how we deal with waste or plastic in our consumption. Women are entrepreneurs. And in the supply chain of plastic recycling, there's such a huge group of women entrepreneurs in the Philippines where you work and we've been engaging also together is that almost 40% of the junk shops are women owned but women don't have access to capital. And we as a circular economy driven investor with a strong focus on E but also on the S really come in and trying to understand what are the needs of the women along the supply chain and then how can we tailor our solutions to that? And we can talk later about how we do it but just put it into context. Okay, good afternoon everyone. My name is Ayaka Matsuno. I'm the director of impact gender investment and innovation program of the Sasaka Peace Foundation. Thank you very much for coming. I know that it's late in the afternoon. But I'm very glad that to be here. Thank you. So I just wanted to give you a little bit background of what Sasaka Peace Foundation is. The Sasaka Peace Foundation is a Japanese private charitable foundation based in Tokyo, Japan. And then in terms of the asset under management, we are the largest and then we have some operation mostly between Japan and overseas because we have a parent organization focusing in the issue in Japan. So we try to really facilitate our work, international collaboration, cooperation and also mutual exchange. So that's what we do. And women empowerment is one of the five key strategies in Sasaka Peace Foundation. And then my team, gender investment and innovation program, we work definitely to promote women's economic empowerment and also gender equality through basically two approaches. So one is through Asia Women Impact Fund. So this Asia Women Impact Fund is a very unique vehicle for us. Not many Asian foundation has this kind of initiative. We took the part of our endowment and then apply a gender lens to really try to bring about positive outcome for women and girls in Asia specifically through our investments. So that's number one. And therefore, we are promoting gender lens investing. So we are here there and then we know all of us as a theater. And then also another part is that we are foundation and we have the different pocket for program funding. So we try to really work together with the local organizations to really work together to create entrepreneurship support ecosystem and more gender smart. And also sometimes we have program particularly for women entrepreneurs. So in that context, we work together in the Philippines with Priya. So, and then on top of that, we are think tank as well. So we try to have some research that is very interesting and then try to move the needle for gender gender equality in the region. And then one thing that we did a couple years ago together with Susan Beagle was gender lens investing landscaping report that really covers that private and public markets and then try to capture all the vehicles that are available. And also recently, we published a report called Financing the Blue Economy in Asia. So we wanted to really highlight a little bit of blue economy today. So that's why I joined this session. Thank you. Okay, great. So as you can see, they're very busy working on many different levels across Asia. So let's talk about the opportunity for investing in climate and gender, generally, but Asia in particular. So can you all talk a little bit about what drives your work? Like what the thesis is? What you're trying to do? And then we're gonna get into the challenges as well and how you're addressing them. But let's focus on the opportunity case first. Well, I already, most of it said it. I mean, we see the opportunity really by enabling the women within the plastic recycling supply chain to get access to capital, to get access to leadership opportunities. So I think that is really key for us because as I mentioned before, the women play a key role in it because they either collect the material, their head of households, the entrepreneurs, in a lot of the businesses we're investing in, these are all family businesses and the women often play a key part in it. They may not be the CEO, but they can be. But they play a key part in building those businesses and attracting additional women. What we see in the industry is the informal sector being obviously as always most vulnerable where the women play a key role. And when we invest in our companies where we see tremendous opportunities by acknowledging that there is an informal sector, that the informal sector has been critical in collecting the material. And by doing that then also be very clear that we need to ensure that when we build and invest and build sustainable supply chains for material recovery plastic, that the women in the system, everyone in the system, but particularly the women most vulnerable have fair wages are protected, that they are given all the support they need through in wherever they work through the supply chain. That is really important. Human rights violation happen and we in the companies we invest in make sure that we have the transparency along the supply chain. We call it sustainable sourcing framework which we have developed together with some DFI's we invested in our fund to ensure that tier one back and steps back all the way upstream that we understand who is working in the supply chain, under what conditions that they're fairly paid, documented it's fully transparent and traceable. That's the only way we can actually do good business, right? By having a real impact. That is really critical for us to make sure that what we do, we do right. Beyond that we invest a lot in women as well because we see throughout the supply chain again that these women entrepreneurs by not having access to capital often also don't have access to procurement. Some of our key investors are some of the biggest brands that consume good companies and I truly believe and we've seen it before in the other panel just before us is that while small and mid-sized enterprises in Asia obviously make the majority of jobs the biggest contribution to GDP and a lot of our often up to 50 and 60% of these businesses are actually women owned they actually have hardly any access to procurement neither in corporations nor in the government. In Indonesia 64% of small and mid-sized enterprises are women owned but they have 0.25% of the government procurement. So this is not just in plastic I'm talking here general numbers out there and so what I think what we need to do as an investor who is socially conscious and is focused on ESG or impact that we fully understand the needs of women along the entire supply chain and tailor the solutions to their needs. Exactly and in our case it is as simple as making sure that the women who work in the different along the supply chain have access to toilets or that we know where their children are when they work and these are all the very simple steps which I think can be implemented to ensure that the women are participating properly within the supply chain. Well that brings it into stark relief. Ayaka. I just wanted to make a comment about this procurement. So I am representing Japan for W20 which is the G20 civil engagement group. So each year we have this communique basically trying to really put that the women's issues concerns and then try to really do the lobby for G20 leaders declaration. So each year we mentioned about this procurement gender-responsible procurement program. That's something that we need to have in G20 countries as well. So you pointed out the very important point. So going back to these opportunities I have three opportunities and I'm gonna be at a little bit high level bear with me. But to impact investing in general is very much growing not only globally but then in Asia and also in Japan finally. So the giant or the tiger has woken up. Prime Minister Kishida, the current prime minister started to really talk about new form of capitalism and then impact investing is one of the tool that he wants to really promote. And then in his plan of this new form of capitalism this impact investing was mentioned and tried to really build on. So now at the moment I think I don't know whether you met Japanese crowd here but then we brought some Japanese entrepreneurs who could really lead the impact economy in Japan. So even in Japan that number is growing interested investors as well it's growing. So and then as you know Japan is very much lacking behind in terms of gender equality. We are always the bottom of the OECD countries and then we are not proud of that. We know that we need to do something and we are making some efforts but then still it's not enough. So it's high time for Japanese government and also the corporate, the private sector as well. So they started to pay more attention to gender equality. So I can really see the impact investing and also the more money coming into Asia including Japan and the more attention given to gender equality. Number two is that the ultra high net worth individuals is growing globally but then in Asia you mentioned but then it's the fastest growing region in terms of the number of high net worth individuals. And then the wealth transfer is happening between 2020 to 2030 and then so the boomers to the millennials, the Gen Genzi, they have a little bit more aligned to sustainable economy. So we can really see that impact investing can be their go-to idea in terms of strategy. So that's a huge opportunity and then the third one I just wanted to talk about blue economy but then before doing that I wanted to go back to that the climate finance. So 20 years ago so from the Rio, the climate finance started to really boom because of the financial gap and then the green bonds came up and then now that everybody is talking about intersection between climate change and in gender, right? And then even this year's G20 leaders declaration for the first time the intersection between the climate change and then gender was clearly mentioned and we need to do something about that. So I can really see the trend coming in and then at the same time this blue economy started to really be coming into the discussion five years ago or so. Because the SDG-14, the life below water is the most underfunded SDGs and then we are talking about 5.5 trillion US dollars only in Asia that is the financial gap for this SDG-14. So now we started to hear that the blue finance coming up with different kind of instruments like blue bonds, blue loans. So our latest report if you're interested please go visit my organization Sasaka Peace Foundation website but then we could really see the trend of increasing the number of blue bonds coming up for the last five years. Now up to 10 billion US dollars in size and then also 51 in number all around the globe. And then 53% of them are coming from Asia because Asia is so much depending on blue economy. Yeah, so I can really see that the soon enough this gender concerns will be discussed in the context of blue economy as well. So this is an opportunity for us. So I wanted to highlight three opportunities. And you had a couple of opportunities in your report, right? There were blue bonds looking at gender and blue economy. Yes, yes. So actually at this point the investors cannot really think of gender consideration in the blue bond because it started a bit too much doing this and doing that and then adding on to the gender equality into that picture. But then just like Regula mentioned, blue economy is very much women's business as well and especially informal economy, formal economy. They might be 20% of the fisheries workforce, only 20% but when we are talking about the second layer which is the back end of the fishing industry. All the fish processing and then aquaculture and all those things are done by women. But then they are 35% less remunerated for the same amount of work that men do in aquaculture. So there is a huge overlook for women's contribution. So we think that this is something that we need to be integrated into the investment strategy soon enough. But then not many cases are happening. There are some, one with IFC project and then also another one in ADP but still to be coming. Okay, so even in the opportunities, the challenge has come out, right? But let's dive more deeply into the challenges that women social entrepreneurs particularly and the climate or circular space face and more in depth about how you're each addressing those challenges and what more needs to be done. I just so fascinating I was like thinking, I have to say I downloaded the report last week and I've been studying it very much in detail because it is a very exciting area, especially for the region that we are in because that is also coastal communities are also most vulnerable to climate change and it's gonna be a critical piece and anything that we need to address across gender and climate. But let me focus on this question because I have a long chance I'll give them a break. But for us as a gender smart incubator the last three years, this is an issue that we've been focusing on quite a lot because as both Regulan and Iaka mentioned the capital issue continues to be a huge problem. I don't think it's a problem only for women entrepreneurs. It is a problem at the stage but obviously women and other agendas as well as when you look at the other factors like geography, socioeconomic class whether you studied abroad or not all of these factors very critically effective in entrepreneurs ability to fundraise and so we've actually also done a small research tiny with support from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation very recently on the gender financing gap in the Philippines because we have all these stories and we're like okay we have to have more data. So there are a few pieces that really stood out and of course the number one, the most common one I think all of us are aware of is the lack of networks and access to information. Information is so key. Now unless you're in a big city and in going to the startup events or people in your social media network are posting these opportunities it's very, very unlikely that you'll actually find out even who's out there, what is out there. So I think lack of access to the information and then if you've got the information lack of access to the networks of getting to the investors continues to be a huge problem but we also kind of surfaced a few more which the women entrepreneurs kind of mentioned. I think the second very interesting piece that we had not really considered is around so there are three issues I would say I would put it as mismatch of fit need and perceptions. So let me start with perceptions because it's a very interesting piece is that most women entrepreneurs that we spoke to in this research and we had about 100 identified that they actually postpone fundraising as much as they can. They prefer to grow organically first and borrow from friends and family which sounds okay but friends and family also don't know the risks of startup businesses so it can be quite tricky especially in the cultural settings as in Southeast Asia. So that is what their preference is and they try to push out fundraising as much and there are two reasons for it. One is that and maybe it is all of us as well when they close their eyes and think about who's a successful entrepreneur they're not really thinking of any women entrepreneurs definitely not someone who looks like them. So that was one. So the second piece of the perception was that unless like you studied abroad or had like especially in the Philippines to large extent Indonesia as well your family connections really is what unlocks capital and so if these two categories you didn't fit into then it becomes really challenging of how do I navigate fundraising. So the perceptions in the minds of the women entrepreneurs of who can actually fundraise who can access financing continues to be a huge barrier. Of course much of it is true. Some of it is also that of course negative stories like percolate more in the ecosystem than the positive ones and we don't actually tell many of these stories as often as we should. So I think that has been a big case. The third piece which is the fit in the need has been that we discovered that a lot of the financing needed is actually smaller ticket sizes and tailored and appropriate. So tailored in the sense to whatever their business is based on their cash flow cycles, revenue based financing, those type of things don't exist. Appropriate in the sense do you actually need equity investment? Can you actually provide these market returns? Most of them cannot. So what other financing options are there? And I think the narrative in the investment circles is really about hyper growth venture capital primarily and 90% of the entrepreneurs actually will not need that or at least don't need it immediately. Maybe they will figure out if they need it later on but actually there is not many other conversations of any other forms of capital. And so that becomes quite limiting and then of course the availability of anybody who can do anything tailored. There's very few people. So that's really kind of the big issues that they're facing. I think there's one piece I wanna say there are two pieces both on the investor side. Of course this is a conference of impact investors. I don't think anybody believes that they are gender biased. Everybody believes that we are gender blind which is the case with most investors that we speak to everyone is gender blind but somehow we still have this problem of not enough women and diverse entrepreneurs getting capital. But there is an issue of I think an investor's literacy and also an investment literacy for women entrepreneurs. Many times it's packaged as financial literacy for women. I think that's wrong because actually they're very good with the money at home in their business, helping the family. But what actually they're lacking is investments literacy. They don't know how to navigate. They don't know what type of instrument is appropriate for them. So that's the piece that we have to address. And on the investor side, the investor literacy really comes from majority of the deals if you look at in Southeast Asia. And I've spoken to about 15 investors because most it's a small community. We know is the primary way that they get the deal is through referrals or word of mouth. Now that and then they're in where the bias sort of comes in. Because that's how investors we have heard mentality. Like if you tell me, if regular tells me, look at this company, I will jump into it and trust it and go with it. And so it depends on who we are talking to. And so the investor's literacy where we all believe we are gender blind. I think we also have to challenge that. And there are a lot of amazing conversations happening. But I think to see the shift, I think you made a very important point. How many lenses do we add? And that is sometimes also what we get to is that everybody of course wants to fund more female entrepreneurs or diverse entrepreneurs. But they're like, okay, but can I formally adopt this? Oh, then I'm like limiting myself. And in a young ecosystem where deals for certain types of capital are small, that becomes a challenge on the investor side. So these are some of the big sort of issues that we are facing on the ground. I just wanted to agree everything that she said. That's all the challenge that we face. Another one on top of that, I just wanted to highlight that there are now the hype of women entrepreneurs globally. There are so many programs that I'm upshirming up, I have to say. But then not necessarily working together and collaborating. And then even if we say women entrepreneurs, we can really think about different segment of women entrepreneurs and then different business models or the social enterprise who doesn't need to have to scale too much or the unicorn type. All under the umbrella of women entrepreneurs. And everybody wants to have the program. So I find that on the ground, some women entrepreneurs just become a bunny and hop, hop, hop to one accelerator to another. Seriously. But then that's not gonna help them unfortunately. We, everybody has good intention. Everybody think that this is the way to support them. But at the end of the day, we need to kind of line up in the chain of support. And then try to really be helpful as possible from the initial stage to become sustainable. So I see that this is kind of silo type of programming that ecosystem level is a challenge. But I think it's not just for women, right? Generally all these acceleration programs that a lot of the entrepreneurs hop from one to the next. And actually then really leapfrogging to the next level is very difficult and then never grow to the level where we could invest. We are investing in mid-size enterprises growth companies where we see, because we look at the sheer volume of material we need to handle, particularly in Asia or also in Latin America, while small startups or startups are important for the future pipeline right now, we have a big issue at hand. And so we need to invest in companies which have the capability to actually go big, right? And fast. So when we look at obviously, when we look at the challenges, yes, I agree with everything you both said. For us, it is generally also the biggest challenges capital. We have been raising, I would say rather successfully almost $250 million in the last four years. But when we look at the overall industry we're in and we need billions of dollars alone in Asia to stem the tide of the waste going into the ocean. And so it's not women only have problems getting capital, it's generally the industry which doesn't get the capital because the traditional financial industry has not seen it as an investment opportunity. And I would say it's possibly stigmatized, it's not sexy, it is waste, right? So it has not been seen as value, but that is changing right now. But when we look at, okay, we have a general understanding, there's a huge capital gap in the region in Asia for the industry we want to build, but then it gets even worse for women exactly in the industry. And therefore we as an investor starting 2018 in 2020 then really started adapting our investment strategy to be much more gender smart. And we did that with Suzanne, that we started really looking at how do we as investor operate? And I think for me, while I truly believe we need to have a diverse group of people in every sector of a corporation and everywhere where we operate, particularly from an investment's perspective, investors are biased. And if we continue to have the majority of the capital in the hands of male investors, it's not gonna change because we need to start being very diverse. I have seen a study where they say if funds or investment managers who are really diverse, not either male or female or but really diverse have an average 10 to 20% higher returns. And so what I think is what we also realized is that if you wanna attract more women, you wanna find these women because they're out there. You just may have to look and look for them, but they're out. Then we need to also adapt the way we make decisions. And so we looked at our entire investment due diligence or an investment analysis process and brought in all these aspects of gender-smart investing and we did that with Suzanne and Sagana. And it is really interesting because I agree it's we're blind or we're biased or we're unconscious, but once I myself have been really feeling like advocating for this, looking at what kind of questions we start asking throughout the due diligence process, once we start thinking about it, how we assess it, what data we need, what gender-disaggregated data we need is so critical to then actually make the proper investment decisions. Because we heard that in the panel before in here also is that ultimately if we don't have those tools, those questions very structured throughout the investment process, what we're ending up is having women asking more and more questions to women and being much more rigorous with them. And so I think that that is really critical. So that we are really clear in how we assess deals. On the other flip side is also what we do is that with the companies we engage in that most of them are still majority male managed or owned, but as part of the process we assess where can we start changing the mindset? What are targets we can agree jointly work towards to bring more women in in all these positions where we think it is critical to have women in? What are the policies we need to have the women protected? And so the portfolio companies we operate in even before we invest, we have a clear action plan where we then define what we jointly think is critical and where the journey should go. And that is I have seen astonishingly well embraced actually if it is not something you push on something but someone but it's something you jointly believe in and start developing then that is really an amazing journey to be on. And we've seen positive enormous positive impact in how very male dominant businesses have started changing and with outcomes innovation which take targets, women, et cetera. And it's just a totally different ball game. But I really believe the investors have a clear role to play. And fair to say that in Asia there is a general lack of women investors yourselves excluded, right? There is, yes, but I think there is also I think we really need to encourage all women who are having an interest in the industry to step up and step into these roles. They are out there. It's like always people feel like, oh, we can't find them. No, it's not true. We have a circular capital. The majority of our leadership team is female. We have a very good healthy balance of female male investment professionals and throughout the entire, all the departments or whatever we call them teams, we have a very healthy balance, male, female, cultures, backgrounds. And I think that enriches enormously. And again, the saying that A, we don't have enough data to make the case or B, there's not enough talent out there. It's not true. We just have to open our eyes and look for them and bring the main and foster them. I agree. We're currently in a program with 2X, called 2X Ignite, which supports first-time fund managers. And I think that group has a lot of first-time women fund managers. But I think the challenge is also that there aren't many. And so there will be many first-time female fund managers. And I think that's a new crop of people. And I don't know if the fund or world is, it's new for them as well. So I think it's tough. There are people getting into it, but maybe not enough. But also to navigate it is not easy. I know that there's many of us raising funds. Lisa is, I am. And it's pretty scary world out there and challenging because we also, we need to build track record, but we can't do that without somebody funding us. So it's a tricky. But by having more investors or LPs, right, who are female, then there is an opportunity hopefully that they are willing to invest. But I agree with you, particularly first-time funders, investors, right, investment firms. It's difficult anyhow, and it is more difficult for women. But we'll still do it. Very good. I just wanted to add on what Greg mentioned. I think it's very important to highlight the due diligence part and then have a framework so that you can really keep track on the impact. So at the end of the day, it's impact investing. So we have to really measure, manage, and then impact. And then for that, we need to also integrate the gender lens into it. So our fund, Asia Women Impact Fund, we recently published the first impact measurement and management framework. So please, I have some copies if you are interested. I can share that with you. But then it was very important for us to really have the set of theory of change and then started from there. We put the criteria to do the due diligence to make sure that this is bringing the outcome that we desire for women and girls. So that's one thing that you wanted to highlight it. And other things, you always mentioned about the business case of intersectional climate change and gender. I wanted to share one, another research that we did two years ago with Bloomberg, new energy finance. That was very interesting. So I would like you to take a look at the world. So we did the, it's a private public market, sorry, but then Bloomberg has this ESG data of 11,700 companies in 102 countries. So utilizing that database, we wanted to see that correlation between gender diversity at the board level, management level and the workplace workforce and the climate performance, governance and innovation. And we could clearly see the positive correlation between the gender diversity at the board level, especially over 30% of women in the board has clear positive indication of the climate change governance and also innovation. And then the governance we are talking about mainly that climate-related data disclosure and also the international framework like TCFD and things like that, whether they can really align their companies to adopt that. So there is a clear linkage between climate change and gender diversity. Great, and I know a lot of people have come in since we started, feel free to move up, but also we will be taking questions, but if anyone has a question that's relevant to like what we're talking about at the moment, feel free to raise your hand and we'll just keep it interactive like that. I would love to hear examples of some of your work, right, to really bring it to life. You're working with entrepreneurs at this intersection, you're helping cultivate new investors and ecosystems. So maybe each of you could give an example or two that kind of illustrates the type of work you're doing and how it's addressing some of these many, many challenges that you've all articulated so well. Sure, I think yes, collaboration, that's the key. We're not gonna get it anywhere without it. And I think it's very nice to aspire towards it, but actually doing it requires a lot of blood, sweat and tears because it's not easy because as organizations, I think as the plenary speaker was saying, we're all focused on scaling our own work, but we have to scale what works and to scale what works or to even figure out what works really requires a lot of collaboration. And I think for us, and I think also it's kind of difficult to talk about Asia as a whole, it's too broad and diverse because the Indian ecosystem is far more mature, for example, than Southeast Asia where we are at least 10 years behind. So I think like difficult to talk about, like let me focus on Southeast Asia and what we're doing. I think for us, addressing this missing middle or what we are actually calling the greater missing middle because we think it starts earlier, even starting from $5,000 beyond microfinance. Because microfinance funds women mostly, but I don't know what happens in the next level because once we go to the next level, then those numbers significantly drop. So that's what we're trying to focus on. One way that we have been doing it is really building a co-investment platform. So it's been sort of three, four years of love and a lot of tears. And it's really, the reason that, I felt that it was urgent for us in the part of the world that we are in, in the Philippines and broadly in that region is that the risk appetite of the investors that existed and what the entrepreneurs needed, the gap was too much. And there's no, you cannot keep training the entrepreneurs because they're not going to get there. So there's something else that we needed to create which is really alternate pools of capital. And in a young ecosystem where these examples don't exist and especially impact investment, like philanthropy and then tech and commercial investment exists, but it's in between, it took me three years of many conversations for us to agree on what it means. And so what we've done is actually bring together about 20 investors on a platform and very painfully doing co-investment deal by deal over the last few years. So I have, so out of the 20, about eight are quite active. And so we've done a few completely tailored, flexible financing instruments. And we started with actually learning journeys, 10 week learning journeys that we all go through impact investment learning and at the end of the 10 weeks we work on a life deal, we do due diligence together, see what questions each other are asking because it's new, it's quite new still in the region. And so that journey has taken us and then we realized that doing the equity investment, co-investment is taking too long. So now we've actually changed gears to working capital which they all understand because many of them actually lenders, they have some lending products already, not at this stage, not an impact investing. And so that is moving much faster. And I also run a blended financing facility. So we have a loss guarantee that has really helped provide some incentives for co-investment. But what I learned through this experience of for three years, I almost gave up in the second year because I was like, this is too hard but something changed. I don't know the stars aligned or whatever. And now we have, we're doing like 10 deals in a matter of three months, which is crazy. But I think for people to understand that and trust that my process and your process and like we can trust each other's process took a while. And for the investors, because they're all doing this for the first time, for them to understand, how do I assess this early stage risk? And how do I really price that risk? I think that was really tough. And I think once we all realize that we will set aside, you know, thinking that only we know each no best, I think it has helped us move forward. And it's still difficult, but I think everyone is excited to invest together. So that's been our journey so far. Okay. I just wanted to say that for foundation, we wanted to be more catalytic. And then those, you know, risk capitol is something that, you know, foundation I expected to provide. So especially in the U.S. there, you guys are doing much, much better. But now at the moment in Japan, because of the registration, it's really, really hard for the public charitable foundation to really provide risk capitol. However, I recently learned that the catalytic capitol that was this defined by catalytic capital consortium, yeah, they started to expand their definition to include grants as well. So I think, you know, even though it's not the catalytic investment capital, but then still we could be catalytic enough by utilizing grants. So one of the example I wanted to share is in Cambodia. So what we do, for example, is to work with an impact venture capital and also local investors network and also ADB, Asia Development Bank. So four of us together in a creative program an accelerator program for early stage startups and SMEs, gender agnostic, sector agnostic. But then still we tried to make this program as gender smart as possible. So there are lots of, you know, hints and I wouldn't really say that it's a trademark, but then made it very, very obvious that the women are very welcome. So at the end of the day, you know, we attracted women entrepreneurs a lot more. So in that program, we have 20 cohort members and then just narrowing down to seven, to four, to two. And then through that business acceleration program, we provide the grant, $5,000, $10,000 and then $15,000. So by the end of the last two remaining, they could really have 30,000. And by then, we are hoping that they could be investment ready. So the first time around in Cambodia, we did that, it's called Chennai Accelerator Program. We are actually very successful. So out of the four remaining, three have already attracted to an investment from outside, amounting 300,000 US dollars. So that was a significant success for us. And then Cambodia is still very small in terms of the ecosystem. So we heard that then other people wanted to join. So now we have USAID and Australian government and then Cambodian government come to this in a program. So we're gonna have the second cohort starting soon. So we try to really bring everybody together and then try to really, you know, tailor-made their needs with grants, three grants, incremental grants. And then by the time that they finish, they can really fly off for the investment. So I think, again, the collaboration is key. That's fantastic and regularly you can answer as you will. But I am curious, I mean, because you're working in the informal economy and you want to invest in models that are inclusive, but can scale, like what does that look like? And maybe you can, you know, talk about some of the informal sector kind of entrepreneurs that you've invested in. We do not invest in the informal sector per se because the informal sector often doesn't have the legal framework or company set up for an investor as we are to invest in. And that is often the case, right? And that's something I think generally we should reconsider how we give access, women access to capital because there's so many opportunities out there where they may just not qualify because they don't have an LLC or whatever they need. But from our case, how we engage with them is if you invest in a company which does recycle plastic, right? They need to get the plastic from somewhere. So they have the network of aggregators or organizations who collect the material. That can be a women owned plastic bank or it can be a women cooperative which collects material. So what we do is that the companies we invest in who recycle the plastic, they build up their own network of where they get the material that within that supply chain upstream with whom they work together, we know that they have, they go by our framework. They are, there is transparency, traceability and that's how we can engage them so that a lot of the informal waste workers can become formal because they've given an ID, they have, it's non-cash based, right? They can actually have to savings account and everything so that that's the way how we can engage and embrace and bring them in rather than neglect. But it is very difficult as a private investor to really invest in the informal sector. I've done that in my past through my work before working in these settlements and work with the community leaders but it has been really difficult to find investors who are willing to do so. They have all their governance structures right and oversight and so that's why I think we need to generally rethink what kind of financial instruments we need to give access, to give capital to those women and women cooperatives and communities. And your model too, you work with a lot of, you partner with a lot of big brands so are they off-taking, like they're the customer for some of these companies? Yes, that's part of our, I think our strength or unique proposition I would say that while the investors, the big brands like Unilever, Procter Gamble, they invest in our fund but on the other side they also partner up with our investing companies, our portfolio companies in product development. There's really great new products coming out of recycled PCR resin. They are the off-takers in most of the cases because they're all committed to a certain percentage of their packaging being from recycled content but they're not in material recovery business, right? That's not their business but they take us as their means to build that supply chain and then take the material. So this partnership is really critical because I think we didn't talk, it's not just about just providing capital, technical assistance, network, access to these corporate brands, we talk procurement, right? We work with them to be ready to actually procure from them and really strengthen these partnerships. And I think again here comes then particularly for women entrepreneurs, it's even more critical because they need that access to those brands and so we can give that to them by investing, by us investing in them and them trusting in us. That's great. Does anyone have any questions at this point or are you working in some of these same areas that you wanna share something about? My name is Lila, I'm speaking not from my current role which is at RMI but from previous roles and things I've seen. Kind of a tough question that I don't even like which is like I have been in the position of creating a blended finance facility seeking philanthropic funding from the funder that had a gender lens and really struggling with it because of what we were trying to do and the focus I should have mentioned is on climate change and the need to really expedite the energy transition in places like Southeast Asia and the Philippines where if you're working with utilities, if you're working with like energy solar developers there aren't women working at those places. So like if that's gonna be a limitation to getting funding, like what's the trade off? What's like how much do you push? How much do you, I feel like in the role I was in it was like a lot of fluff. It was really hard. We are not a gender lens investor. We are a gender smart investor. The industry we would not find, when we look at the sheer problem we have at hand as I mentioned we need to solve if you were to only invest in women we would not resolve the problem. So that's why for us there's a difference. It is an extra layer on top to seek out those women who are out there and deserve capital but it is a global problem we have and we need to invest in the businesses out there which are in our opinion the best or have the best opportunity to grow and then help them to become more sensitive to the topic and embrace it. That's our approach. I think one way a lot, some of the funders that we work with actually don't have a gender lens but we still continue with our gender smart approach in measuring and then when we reported it back in future funding, not to us, but when they started actually funding other initiatives so we've seen some of that. So I think it really depends on, it's difficult when the funder is not interested in this maybe because it doesn't have or your project doesn't today have that gender impact. But I think only if you measure then can we know actually what can change and in some cases maybe it won't but in others it might just take a longer time because even maybe the business or the project itself may not be in a position to actually measure that or have women working in that, especially if it's in these type of sectors and we see that a lot in construction and Sheltatech which Lisa and I worked on a lot and when we try to apply sort of a gender lens and measure that there is no one here, there are no women here to be counted with a lot of the time we got that feedback but we still have to do it. Calling me out. I had the privilege to work with Priya and Regula and Sasakawa Peace Foundation adjacently on the Sheltatech project and I'm focused on climate tech in the built environment in my work so that's a perfect fit for my efforts supporting our campaign to emerging fund manager in that same thesis space. We don't have a gender lens for our approach but we are a gender lens organization so like as you said, Regula, it's not a gender equity fund but every intention that I have is to promote gender equity through all of my efforts and in all of my conversations so I think it's an important opportunity as a fundraiser when I talk to LPs to bring this element into the conversation and not be afraid of that question of is that going to narrow your portfolio? Well, I don't have quota for the portfolio. I'm thinking about gender in the way I approach everything I do in terms of sourcing, due diligence, partnerships, the way that we all work together. Well said and wouldn't success be when you don't have to have a gender lens because there are so many really great women entrepreneurs that everybody will just want to invest in which is why your ecosystem work is so important. Anyone else, any investors in the audience? Okay, well, we, I wanted, I mean, I think we've talked a lot about the tailored financing but is there more to say on that? I mean, I think that came out loud and clear that you really have to meet some of these women entrepreneurs where they are and there is a need for that catalytic layer or guarantees or whatever the instrument is but is anyone doing anything creative in that regard? Yeah, I feel like all alternate and tailored is at the moment very creative because it is not the norm. It is, I think right now, I think globally not as much in Southeast Asia and definitely not in the Philippines, it is quite difficult to still do that. So for us, we are taking it on a deal by deal basis and seeing, we really see the impact of this entrepreneur, we really want to support them and then we actually look at, do the due diligence and see actually because what sometimes they ask us for is not what they need also going back to that investments literacy issue. So then we are really sort of tailoring what that is needed. It is not possible to do if the investors that, for example, that I've lined up don't have the mindset to be able to do it. So currently the way that we're working is that they are actually saying, okay, I have $300,000 that I can play with. So, okay, let me come to this co-investment and then we'll do this together and then maybe they can graduate to my other products. So that's kind of one way that we've been trying to do but things that we've been doing is really more revenue-based, flexible repayment schedules, restructuring without any penalty, things like that because these are super early stage entrepreneurs and this is probably the first time they're taking formal financing and we also want them to build credit history so that they can graduate to other more formal products. Do you want to give an example of one because you have the accelerator, right? So give us an example of a company that you help go through that. Yeah, so very quickly the first ever sort of flexible or tailored financing instrument that we did was actually a credit line which typically is only sort of given to businesses that have a lot of cash flow history, very predictable sort of cash flow. And so the reason that we chose to was that the entrepreneur who was running a peer-to-peer lending for agribusiness decided that they will also kind of move into the retailing of some of the products from the farmers and it was an experiment but they actually did not need, it is highly seasonal and so they only needed it for very, very short periods of time and even sort of a short-term working capital did not make sense because the need sort of varied quite a lot. So hence we sort of parked a pot of money that three investors said, okay, we really like this business and we said, okay, let's structure it as a credit line and see how it works. It took a lot of time to write that loan and the agreement because we really wanted to be as flexible as needed and also try and provide a friendly rate, interest rate to the entrepreneur. So that's something that we've done. So credit lines, you don't get an unless you have three years of profitability, for example, in the Philippines. So for somebody who had, was not even cash flow positive yet I think it was quite an innovative instrument they're doing well. I don't know whether this is considered innovative but then for very early stage social enterprise in the Philippines, we decided to have the crowdfunding platform and the campaign. So we tried to look for crowd sourcing for that fund at the beginning. So this is the way that we wanted to really build on their credit and then later on they can really fly off to different investors. But then at the really, really early stage we wanted to help them to get some capital. So that's what we have been doing. And I think we were getting the one minute mark. So can I just ask the panelists for like really quick let's treat it like a lightning round kind of closing remarks anything you want to leave the audience with like your one or two big ideas or calls to action. Let me start easier to start from the first. So I wanted to say three things. The first is that we need to change the narrative that did not find the gender lens is always not a cost. It's an opening door and then new opportunities. Everybody will talk about this, for example, GX you know, green transformation. Everybody was so hyped up. Then I'm really looking forward looking innovation and then growth. But then general lens is something like, you know add on something that you need to really look into and then something that is limiting the portfolio, et cetera. But then we need to change the narrative. This really opens up the different doors. Number two is that, you know since we are impact investors and impact investing is definitely we need to make the impact transparent. So we need to really set up impact measurement management system and then also true to the theory of change and then really track the impact so that we don't really do the impact washing. The third one is this title across collaboration cross sector collaboration. That's definitely a key and a foundation is not just a ground maker. We could be the catalytic partner strategic partner for you. So let's talk and then we can really try to find a way that we can really work together. Thank you. Sure. So I feel like I'm next year when I come to Socap I'm gonna come with the placard, which we'll see. Fund Southeast Asia. And I'm gonna be like that, you know that guy with the placard, right? Like who's viral on social media. Maybe I should do that tomorrow. I don't know. So that's my first call. I think Southeast Asia is a very young ecosystem. And sometimes in most of the global conferences I'm like hunting for the people. Thank you to everybody who came here to figure out who's interested in the region. So I think we are young and growing, growing pretty fast. It is the fastest growing economies globally but somehow in the impact investment conferences we're not as sexy. So I'm gonna figure out how to make us sexy as we go. But I think there may be a lot of known and funded fatigue because a lot of these ecosystem building initiatives have already been tried in India. Sorry, been tried in Latin America and Africa. Now everybody wants the next new thing. But actually we don't need anything new. We just need to build the foundation. And that's what we really need support on. So that's my first call. I don't know. Probably this needs to be said in the plenary with like thousands of people, but let's say it anyway. I think the second piece is that I think we have to, a lot of the times we have a global and a regional approach but I think it's very important to work with local partners. And this is the message in the plenary as well. Because we are on the ground. We understand there's a huge cost to due diligence. And I think we can help mitigate that as people on the ground because we are already probably working with the pipeline. And somehow in the pandemic it happened a lot more because no one could fly in but now we are back to flying in and flying out. So I think, and sometimes we miss the opportunity for collaboration which is right in front of us. So I think we have to work very actively. These are very young and growing but also difficult markets for impact investing. We have not had any exits yet in Southeast Asia. We're all looking for them. So we're going to have to figure this out together. There's no other way forward. So I think we really have to collaborate radically. And there's a lot to be learned from other ecosystems that we can adapt but we don't have to take that long to make learn those lessons. So I hope that we can really share and not be in our silos as much because I think that's the only way that we're going to be able to move forward. Particularly, I mean I focus now on South and Southeast Asia. I mentioned in the beginning that the small or micro small and mid-sized enterprises or the backbone of the economy not just in South and Southeast Asia but everywhere. In the context of where we live and work half of these businesses are owned by women and we know they are low-tech and they have lower profitability because they don't have access to capital and many other things. It is all known. We don't need more data. We don't need more concepts. All I'm thinking is we know how we can get done. And what my hope is in my dream and what I try to convey is that at the end of the day it's about action. And action for me is with a clear intention every day, step by step implement these projects. It just can be done. We just need to be very intentional and aware and always reflecting on what is really the best for these communities and what they think, they tell us what they need and then we just need to implement. Capital is out there. I mean, I'm shocked sometimes where capital goes. It's not that there is no capital. We just need to be intentional in where we want the capital to go and what we want the capital to do.