 the Executive Director for Brookshieko System Foundation. And today we're hosting our second season, second episode of this Impact Investments. We had a very interesting panel last Sunday and it was overwhelming to listen to all the folks that provided us with inputs. And we thought, hey, let's do one more. And we have some amazing folks with us this evening. I'll quickly introduce, so we have Vitzal Kanakia from 100xVC. We have Akeb Hussain from FreeFlow, Roshna Chandrasekhar from Upaya Social Ventures, and Akila Gonzalez from Baytree. And here's Abhijeet. I invite all of you to maybe quickly share an introduction about what you guys have been doing, a little bit about your work, so that our viewers know about you. So, Vitzal, do you want to move first? Surely. Thanks Abhijeet for the wonderful introduction and hello all for joining me and joining us. So broadly, I'm Vitzal. I'm the C2 and Principal here at 100xVC. We're an early stage venture fund focused on Indian startups working only with Indian startups at the pre-seed and seed stage, ideation and above. We've made 39 investments in total until now and keep making investments 10 to 15 every quarter or so. Just to talk a little bit on how we think of startups, we believe kind of the best impact startups are also the one that create the most value for stakeholders. So ours is, we invest in a ton of startups, not just in the sense of, will these guys be able to create a change in society, but also with a view of can they do it sustainably while creating value and uplifting larger chunks of society. So that's broadly 100x and what we do. Thank you Vitzal, 100x has been doing wonderfully well in the past few years and the, I think you've been pioneers in terms of bringing the ISafe note in India. And I think that's been a game changer for a lot of people. Very, very happy to host you this evening. I'll pass on the bait into Rachna. Hey Rachna. Hi Abhijeet and hi everyone else. Thanks for joining us today, especially on a Sunday evening. Just a quick word about the prior social ventures. So we primarily are an early stage impact investor and our focus has been on investing in organizations that create jobs or livelihood opportunities for those in extreme poverty. So we basically work across sectors from investing in agribusinesses, waste management companies, killing organizations, et cetera, as long as the thesis is around improving livelihood opportunities or creating more jobs as the organization scales. That's the kind of organizations we look at. What we also do is look at building capacity for such organizations who are early stage but not yet ready for investment. So we basically run an investment readiness accelerator program, which is about a four to five month program which kind of works on key aspects that investors typically look at. And then we also provide a platform for the organizations to connect to other organizations in the ecosystem, other investors in the ecosystem, along with Upaya also looking at at least a couple of organizations to invest in from the cohort also. So that's broadly what we do. I think this time around, especially this year, our focus has been on the millet businesses. So we partnered with MIT D-Labs to run a program with a gender lens because we realized that the gap is even stronger when it comes to early stage organizations led by women in terms of investment readiness capacity and also navigating like the investor ecosystem which honestly in India is riddled with a lot of biases. So we're trying to kind of put both together and see how we can actually kind of push for these organizations to really make it and be able to raise investments going forward as well. So that's a quick word about Upaya and what we are currently up to right now as well. Abhijeet, if we can hear me back to you. I think we've sort of lost Abhijeet. So let's just take the bait and on. I'm happy to carry on from you. Thanks and good evening to everyone that's joined. And excellent to hear from you, Rashna, especially about the GLI focus. I think it's good. And we should touch upon that in a bit more detail later because that's something that's close to my heart as well. So moving on, this is Akhilia here from Petri. We are a marketplace or a platform for impact investing. So we specifically focus on organizations that cater or solve for problems relating to the people or the planet, but in a financially sustainable or what we would like to call it for profit manner. So these are market-based solutions to social environmental problems that particularly challenge our nation, India. We're India focused. So being a marketplace, we work with both sides of the ecosystem. One is the entrepreneur side and the primary support we provide there is, we work with early-stage entrepreneurs, primarily sector-agnostic as long as our impact criteria is met. And we understand the pains and the challenges that come with fundraising, especially for early-stage entrepreneurs. We are very focused on impact. So we have a good grip of what impact looks like. We have entrepreneurs think through that and develop their thesis, their theory of change, think through their metrics, but also everything an entrepreneur would need to get investment ready. We don't really prepare their deck or their model, but we help them think through their story and really help them and hand-hold them across that journey. That's a bit on the entrepreneur side. On the investor side, we work with a mix of individual and institutional investors based in India and overseas. So this is a mockery mix between angel investors, family offices, micro VC funds, VC funds, and impact-focused funds as well. With the understanding that, yes, some of them may not primarily focus on impact, like we have Vasahira as well, who's a part of his agenda, so get impact, but some of them have a co-focus of looking at double or bottom-line returns. So it's a mockery mix. The idea with the investor side is really to also educate the ecosystem, especially the newer entries into the market, like the H&I segment and the family office segment, because our aim is to really enlarge this market to draw in more players to hopefully expand the market and the ecosystem for impact investing in India and to support entrepreneurs that will shape India for a better tomorrow. Yeah. Thank you, Akeelia. I would ask Akeem to go on. Yeah, thank you for having me here. Thank you, everyone, for joining in. This is Akeem. I represent an organization which is called FreeFlow. We are primarily the national venture-building partner of Invest India, and by venture-building primarily what we mean or what we intend to develop is a complementary ecosystem to every entrepreneur, whether he be creating financial value or impact or ROI, because at the end of the day, what happens in India is as entrepreneurs and generally first or second-generation entrepreneurs, we try to do a lot of things ourselves. And then there is this jack-of-all-trades and master-of-run synopsis that kind of seeps in very quick. So we are trying to build this complementary ecosystem for them wherein you love what you do and do what you love. And then when you do that, you essentially are causing every positive correlative evidence that you started up with. In about a year and a half, we have been able to work with somewhere around 21 and 13 startups, 70 odd of them have primarily been into impact. We've got about 37 of them funded. And the idea has been essentially to validate user experiences, to validate their traction, to validate and build with them with regards to their tech, with regards to their compliances, with regards to everything else that kind of fulfills that puzzle for them. Are we an accelerator, possibly? Are we an incubator for sure? Are we a venture builder? That's what we want to define ourselves with. And both the adversities as well as the positives of COVID have kind of only gone ahead and accelerated our process towards identifying the unit entrepreneur in India and then taking him as early as a college campus to as late as somebody late in his 60s wanting to get back to the society with a certain solution for which he has an eye for. So that's the idea with FIFLO, skimming from identifying the best innovation possible to essentially enabling it with the last mile investment. So that's how it is. Yeah, Abhijit, you're apparently back. So we have a moderator back. Or do we? Or do we? Yeah, that's the question. You'll have to unmute yourself or else we'll have to moderate it ourselves. Yes, thank you. Yeah, I wasn't being able to. Yes, I think my internet is acting up today for some reason, but thanks for carrying on. And thanks for that amazing set of introductions. I think all of you have been doing phenomenal work across in your organizations and enabling entrepreneurs out there. So Akib, you shared a very interesting take on what FIFLO is doing. My first question goes to you. In terms of you both, you work with both commercial and social impact startups. I think one of the key misconceptions is social impact startups are primarily NGOs. They can never be profitable or then you cannot see profit in a social impact. What do you guys specifically look in such cases or how do you work with them to make them investment ready? Viji, as far as the investment readiness is concerned, it is primarily an evidence-based theory. Any last mile investor or anybody who is essentially wanting to get into a particular business model at another stage is primarily looking at as many evidences that he or she might essentially be able to find for a particular model. And it applies to both financially viable and socially viable startups because at the end of the day, if I'm asking a consortium or our own fund tool, which essentially has a certain frequency to itself, to actually go ahead and put money, there has to be a supporting evidence of what is it trying to achieve. And as far as we kind of build that particular evidence, whether we user acceptance or customer journeys or the kind of community impacts that these people are looking at, it kind of serves up. It necessarily does not need to be a certain kind of a market rate investment or a partial recovery of capital theory that we apply it to because a lot of people work on those principles are we going to make the market average out of it or is there an exit somewhere down the line in the tunnel? And obviously we need to take care of the investor's concern. But if there are enough number of evidences being ticked in the checkbox, then most often than not what you have found out that there have been enough people coming to the fore for specific kinds of models. And they do have their strategic preferences. They do have their soft corners, if I may call it, with regard to certain kind of models or certain kind of problems that need solution. But mostly it's about how many checks are we essentially being able to give to the unit investors for the eventual check to come into the entity. So that's the kind of relationship that we maintain. It's about evidencing, it's about proof of concept, which is as strong as possible. It's about the ability of the entrepreneur being able to prove that his model has the wherewithal to run irrespective of that money, but it only provides that extra kick when that kind of money gets into the system. So that's the kind of evidence that we are looking out for in any given singular model. Okay. I think Rajna, you also mentioned your Rana investment readiness program. What do you specifically help the social enterprises to make them investor at ready? Yeah, so I think I keep kind of put it really well. I think even when we, so since it's an accelerator program, we don't look at organizations or let's say still at a pilot stage, what we do look for even for the program is some evidence that it's a model that works, right? And it could be at very early stages, probably very little traction, but we look for evidence. And then on the other side is also, when we look at it from an investment lens, it's also talks about like possibility, is there a scope for building out the market there, right? So what we actually put them through in the program is more about refining that model and seeing, okay, if you are at a stage where you're able to, let's say if it's a product-based model or if it's a service-based model, you're able to kind of show that there is attraction for customers and you're able to show evidence in terms of that, in terms of the social impact that you're creating. What we could help them do is one, refine the business model that they have, help them identify specific errors they could work on and explore. Two is build their financial management capacity because one of the first things investors, even if an early stage investor will look at is what your financial model looks like, like what are your unit economics, what are your assumptions really and really grounding them to things that make sense and are relevant and not just like numbers that you're throwing out of the blue to show like a 10x growth or a 20x growth, making it something that actually makes sense and also helping the entrepreneurs really understand how this plays out for them when they're projecting their business for the next few years. So we do spend a lot of time in terms of providing that support. And for us, the other bit is also impact. So we really do put in a lot of work for impact, so which also means that we help them build their capacity in terms of how they can measure their impact. One is for themselves because if they are a social enterprise and they want to focus on, let's say improving livelihoods or looking at jobs, you need to be able to build capacity to at least collect like the basic amount of data. But before that, it's all about understanding what your theory of change looks like. What are the key indicators or metrics that you can actually track, right? And this is all from a very realistic perspective, keeping in mind that there's only limited resources, but there are always like two or three key things that you could look at. So we actually help them think through that entire process and look at how they can actually implement it for themselves and kind of build it into their overall MIS as well, right? Potentially because the idea is that just like you would track like revenue growth year on year, a month on month, the idea is to also look at what are the other aspects of your business that are actually giving you information to grow in a certain direction. So a lot of our focus is on finance and impact. What we then also do is other support is like I mentioned about just strengthening the business model. We also do a little bit of leadership work again, because I think at the early stage, apart from like looking at just the fundamental evidence and possible financial sustainability, you're backing the entrepreneur by the end of the day. And I think at an early stage, like even an organization that's five years old and especially in the current context when organizations have gone through so much change, it's all about the entrepreneur resilience and how they are able to learn from what works, what doesn't are able to kind of pivot the businesses to keep it relevant. So we try and like also look at it from that perspective. And I think that's broadly what our investment readiness program covers. Wow, that's quite thorough and very happy to know about it. So does this happen like once you invest into them or is it like part of a preprep like open kind of a thing? Well, I guess it's a free prep, if that's what you call it. So what we realized is that a lot of organizations that are coming to even a to buy out and we really come in just as a seed funding, our funding is like pretty small. But at the same time, with the organizations coming to us, we realized that they don't necessarily fit the basic criteria of what investors look for. And we realized that and a lot of other investors tend to be even more stringent. So I'm just like, so I think in 2017, that was a gap that was identified. And we kind of figured that what they need is like these basic things like financial management, impact management, pitch deck building and things like that to be able to even get to a stage where U Payak can invest in them. And then it also opens the doors for them to pitch to other investors also. So it's actually we then pick a couple of organizations I mean, we at least try and commit to one from every cohort. We've gone up to like investing in three out of a cohort of 10. We keep the cohort sizes very small, just given that it's a pretty hands-on program in that sense. But yeah, so sorry, I went a long route to answer your question but it's before we even invest in them, we kind of put them through a program. Well, that's great to know because I feel not a lot of organizations are doing that. Especially the investing side, most investment organizations actually just come put money or help them raise funds and then it's like they're up to themselves to execute it at their level or, I think even in impact or even early stage a lot of entrepreneurs miss out on like what exactly does an investor need from me, right? So they miss out on a lot of basic stuff. I think also what I hear is 100X does a certain similar thing, but then they come like after you invest you run like a founders club or something like that if I'm not wrong. So what cell could you maybe share a little bit on that front on how you work with the founders hands-on? Surely, thanks so much Abhijeet. Wonderful to hear about everybody else's programs and the work they would do with entrepreneurs. Our work is fairly similar in that we are, we love working very, very closely with entrepreneurs from the ground up. So typically what the process looks like is if a founder reaches out to us through pitch at 100X.vc we evaluate the deck and then we ask them to share certain details, have multiple conversations and keep gathering data until we have conviction saying this is a company we do not want to miss out on or we have a lack of conviction saying this is not a company I can really bet everything on kind of thing. At that point, we give the transfer and then we decide whether to invest or not. We only typically engage with companies who are our porcos. So it is only if we've invested in a company do we work closely with them? We do have a class system. So we match our investments together into what we call a class. So we made three sets of investments, class one, class one, class three across which we've made 39 investments in total. Completely sector agnostic, really no barrier to who can apply to 100X. The only thing is we invest only in India. We want to invest in Indian startups, domiciled in India by Indian founders kind of thing. And open to looking at everything. Typically five things we may look at before investing would be A, the market opportunity, right? Is it a large fast growing market with a few poll players or if there are poll players then kind of, are you disrupting them by being 10X better? B, the founding team, is there founder market fit? Do you guys understand the market well? Are you guys hustlers, that kind of stuff? C would be a solid business model. We invest in businesses where there is a good business model which can scale exponentially and make money, make profit if not now then at least in the future. And D would be an outlook. Is there some sort of mode or IP or differentiation which can be built into the business? And lastly, a fifth part would be building an internal conviction saying, hey, is this company going to be able to give us a 20X return kind of thing? Once we invest into a startup, after looking at these broad things, we work closely with them to help them find the pitch, their business model, their go-to market, help them with the, I'm the CTO here. So we also work with founders, everything from products up, kind of figuring out the product roadmap, figuring out hires, figuring out user funds, next fund raise. Who, what do you want to build? Who are you reaching out to? What is your sales pitch? What is your investor pitch? Anything and everything. And also getting you the right clients, partners, connects that you require. Let's say you're selling to enterprises, there is some B2B route you need then those are typically relationship driven. So opening our networks and doors enable you to crack those partnerships or sales connections. And broadly shaping up the company to be more investor friendly. And then helping our podcast raise the next round through the VC pitch day, which is an event we host where we showcase our podcast to our network of angels, VCs, family offices, corporate VCs, et cetera. So typically most of our podcast tend to raise the next round from that and even post that round for as many rounds as possible. 100X is always available. They're very active investors and tend to be only a text or a call away for our podcast. So that's broadly 100X and what we do and how we add value to founders. Thanks, Watsal. That's amazing, amazing work really there. Like I know a handful of folks that are doing that and very happy to see and hear it first hand that kind of amazing work and hand holding that you do with early stage entrepreneurs. I think such kind of capital is the need of VR and more hands on work with entrepreneurs will really help them scale to the next level. And I think like, I think I haven't seen any other investment firm which has a CTO really there and which is actively on forums as much as I've seen you. So kudos to that. And it really, it says a lot about the organization itself that every person in the organization is so invested. And even if a CTO coming out and speaking about the investment it says, it talks amazingly well about you folks. So moving the bait into Akhila, maybe could you share a little bit more about Baytree and how it's engaging with entrepreneurs at large? Absolutely. So our work is primarily to get entrepreneurs investor ready to similar to, I think Rashna has covered some of the best that we would touch upon as well. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs, capital is just one of the raw material that goes into making a business successful. There's a lot that needs to come before that. And a lot of thought thinking about what happens after that capital that I think, and everybody on this panel will agree that entrepreneurs really need help with. And that's where we step in because we work with relatively early stage entrepreneurs, at least we have found to a certain extent. And I don't wanna make a general statement, but entrepreneurs, most of them either are great storytellers or focus on numbers. To find an entrepreneur that has a good mix of both is sometimes really difficult. So we try and bring in that balance in terms of the lens with which they're looking at their business. That A, can you articulate your vision, your mission? Where are you taking this business? What is your grand sort of vision five years down the line if this was successful? And then really also bringing their motivation in because I think especially with social entrepreneurs, the reason why they're doing it, the passion with which they're doing it becomes all the more important because these are tough markets to crack running a profitable business in these underserved segments, which social entrepreneurs usually do is very tough. So really having that story in place is very important. That's one. Secondly is like Krishna said, also the financial sort of business plan. So we don't build this out at Baitre, but we challenge their assumptions along the way, really putting a middle in front of them and saying, hey, this is what the market is moving at. And do you really think you can do this? Or if you can, then what are you doing so differently from the other players that are out there? So that's the second sort of support that we provide. Thirdly, I think one of the challenges again, early stage entrepreneur space is because you're filled with so much of optimism and exuberance, they forget that there are competitors out there. A lot of them actually don't even study the market as much to know who they're competing with or even if there is an existing solution that's similar to theirs. So really again, just asking them the right questions to arrive at those sort of data points to make sure that they are presenting a compelling solution, but also thinking through their business model in the right way. Fourth, I would say is in terms of scalability. And this is again, not only for impact entrepreneurs, but any early stage enterprise, you know, you achieve a certain level of proof of concept or you build an MVP, but then what about that next level? How do you take it there? What is your sort of plan? What is your go to market strategy? Really helping them think through that as well. And then the final piece I would add is really on the impact metric front. And this becomes more important for impact startups because claiming you have intentionality to solve a problem versus actually proving it are two different things. And some entrepreneurs forget the fact that they have to actually track metrics. There are metrics available to track, you know, what they claim to do. There is like Rajnath again said, a theory of change that you can outline. There is data, there are metrics, or there are different systems like we have IRAs, we have GIN, we have IMP. The different frameworks that these entrepreneurs need to think through and need to think through at the outset and put them in place. So if an investor comes three months down the line and I claim that I increase livelihoods or I'm reducing inequality, then it's not just a storyline, but I have hard data to prove it. So that's some of the four or five things we help them think through and apart from what you would usually see at other firms as well. Absolutely, thank you very much. I think it's just very important to ask those right questions and make the entrepreneur think towards it. I think as entrepreneurs, we mostly miss out on like, while we're doing our work, it's mostly, how can I ensure that there's more impact, but then we forget like, how am I measuring it properly? How do I scale it up? I think those are very few things. Those are like some of the things that we, like as entrepreneurs we miss out on and which when we come and talk to an investor, I think that's where we understand that, oh, shit, I should have really focused more on that stuff. But yeah, I think it's, thank you for sharing that. Also, I think just a precursor to my next question for all of you, I think especially for Akila here. So with Betri, you mainly work as a marketplace model. So how do you really ensure for insight investors to come and invest into these startups for you? Great. So I like to broadly define the investor category into two irrespective of whether they're individual or institution. So there's one category that gets impact investing, that you know, they clearly understand that this is not cutting a philanthropy check, that this is investing into any other business except that while they are financially sustainable, they also have a social return on investment. So that's one category, which I think is already educated, is aware it doesn't need that sort of education. Then we come to what I would say the newer class of investors and the other one that Betri's trying to target, which becomes a lot more tough. These are investors that are probably interested in impact investing, have heard about it, but then they have a lot of questions like, you know, how is this different from philanthropy? Okay, I am interested and I have this pool of capital, but how do I really source these deals? And how do I go about this entire end to end journey? And that's where we come in. We literally run what we call, you know, investor sort of education days. We partner with a lot of other firms to work with their clients to really educate them and really starting from the basics, you know, where does philanthropy fit in in this whole capital spectrum? Because let's admit it philanthropy also has a part to play that are some problems that cannot have market-based solutions and that philanthropy addresses them, yes. And I think we have at the other spectrum, you know, pure financial only sort of investing. And then how impact investing is somewhat in the middle of that spectrum. And you can have again, you know, impact investing that where investors are okay with below market returns, where investors are okay with or expect, you know, average market returns as well. And how does impact investing really fit between or is at the intersection of both these sort of social returns and financial returns? So that's the sort of education that we give to our investor base. And we also think, you know, the best way of putting this forward or bringing this narrative across is really putting them in front of an entrepreneur. For example, we have one of our entrepreneurs who's catering and who's solving the problem of accessibility for test prep, but for state government exams in tier two, three and rural areas. If you, the minute you take this to an investor or a potential investor, you know, people, the first question is, how can you make money off or is someone from a village willing to spend on something like this? And then you have data, you have metrics, you have a journey that this entrepreneur has over two years that shows not only are they solving a very important problem, which is lack of accessibility and unaffordability in the segment, but at the same time that these people are willing to pay for these solutions because it is not something, it is need-based. It is not something that they like to have, but it's something that they need to have and nobody has been offering it because a lot of people just think that you cannot run a sustainable business in that segment. So the minute you put such, you know, such sort of an example in front of investor, they get it more than conceptually, they get it because they see it out there, they're seeing it playing out in real life. And you do this over and over and over again. You open the floor up to the most basic questions, right? Nobody is here to judge everyone's here to support each other. And I think the impact ecosystem, I like to think is very collaborative, really open that up, take all these questions, show them examples, show them how the market has evolved. And at the end of the day, this is a long journey, right? This is not going to happen in a week or a month, but if you do this over and over and over again, eventually you will have people that understand it, that get it and move from intention to action. Okay, thanks for sharing that, Tequila. So my next question is like open to the floor here. And maybe you can take your individual takes on it. So dear entrepreneurs, my dear friends, when we go forward and ask all these investors in the head, like front of us, give us money, we also have a moral obligation to return that. And which we sometimes forget, if we get money, we get investment, that grant is not free. So how do you guys look at ROI or like both at a social level and at a capital level? So what are your thoughts like? What kind of expectations do we have there? Anyone would like to take it first? Please, Akib. Vachal was unmuted first, so Vachal, please. Thanks, Akib. So maybe I can add a little bit here. So at least from our side, we would rather prefer a dead company over a living dead company. Our strong belief is, the companies and the entrepreneurs should try to go all out and build to the scale and the vision they have rather than being stuck and feeling stuck over seven, 10 years in something which is not growing and which doesn't allow them the freedom to express and do the work and the impact they want to do on this country, right? So I would rather have a company and an entrepreneur which goes through the money and dies. I mean, obviously not that we want companies to die out, but better than having a company which is stuck somewhere and not growing and the entrepreneur too cannot leave the business. So my take to entrepreneurs is always, it's okay if you're kind of about to die kind of thing, but you have to put in each and every effort to try to make the company add the vision you have for it. And if it doesn't work out too bad, my belief is always that it is the idea that goes rogue, not the entrepreneur. It's the idea that turns it on. So you can always come back to us with a new idea and we'll work with you on something new if we really like you as an entrepreneur. But that's kind of my take. From an impact perspective or an impact ROI perspective, my primarily, what I always look at is, you know, the companies that we invest in, what kind of or what amount of jobs and what quality of jobs are they able to create? As an example, until now our protocols have created over the last one and a half years around 460 jobs across 39 startups. So that's something we track very kindly. You know, we believe startups are going to be the next growth engine for the job, jobs and the economy in the country. And hence, you know, that's one of the kind of key KPIs we keep tracking for our impact. How many jobs have our protocols created? Thank you, thank you, Manu. Akip. Yeah, it kind of adds up to what Sill just said to what is possibly left often by most of us. Sometimes it's the strategic relevance that a particular investor has to why does that particular consortium of that particular individual add up to be the right investor that an entrepreneur does not look at. Especially as Indian entrepreneurs, we have kind of got into the fad of proving our success vis-a-vis the valuation slash the investment that we actually get. And that does not add up. That generally has been a misnomer. And people like Watsal and people who have been extensively into creating these class and batches of investment workforce would agree to this much more than anybody else that what we have identified that a certain kind of energy brings them to the process. And then there is a certain kind of lag that kind of sets in. You kind of get through with the laurels that you've earned via the investment for getting about the fact that there is a pre and a post to it. And sometimes that's because you've not got the most strategic person as your investor. It's not always possible. It's not always sector agnostic in a certain way. There are persons which do not look at their roles beyond the purse. But that is something that we have been focusing on a big way that who are you essentially getting funded by and why? Are you being able to answer that question for yourself? Because if your focus is output, if your focus is your reliance on the intuition that has brought you till now, the judgment that has made you make the team that you actually have as of now, or the point in time metrics that you are essentially using, then you can't use it just for the sake of raising good capital. So if there's showing enough resilience and I'm not falling for just the hard metrics that we as investors or the investment consortiums can bring in, then I see a certain value in essentially continuing with the team. And as was very rightly put up by Wetzel when he was introducing also that a lot of it matters on our conviction with that particular team or with that particular entrepreneurial dream to be taken beyond just the rounds that we are actively involved in. And we'll only do that if we believe that there is enough intuition that's driving it. And then they're being able to maintain a certain bit of themselves. I've seen people losing themselves. I've seen teams losing their own DNAs to just be ready for fun. And that's not the reason that they started up for. And then that's the most beautiful part of starting up, irrespective of what jobs we create, creative, irrespective of what social impacts we kind of create. Eventually it was about a very small problem that you identified and you had this gusto about yourself to create a people-eye and a people's team to actually address it. And unfortunately, if that gets lost somewhere, that's something that is a put-off. So if there are people who are looking at exciting strategic alliances and ventures which are confident about themselves, then that excites us the most. Because you'll find it as a metric in India. A lot of people get these equity-based fundings and very few business models are confident enough to take debt because eventually they are going to feel the pain of it and equity in a certain way is a buffer. So we need to burst this particular misnomer that has kind of developed around equity and around the held ownership that you essentially go ahead and give the investor. You need to feel liable for it because it's at the end of the day a big liability that you're adding to your table. And it's an expensive process. Nobody raises an investment for free. It is often the most expensive cycle of activity that you have been part of. So why based on something that you could always optimize? Think like an entrepreneur even while you're raising your funds. So that's one of the messages that I've always worked upon with the cohorts that we have run. So that would be my take on it. Thank you for sharing that. I think the last statement really stuck with me like be an entrepreneur while raising funds. I think with a lot of startups that I also worked with, I always tell them that, OK, if you can delay your investment, please do that. If you can raise debt, please do that. I think equity is the last resort that you should go for. Live with your best investor possible. That's a customer. Exactly. Build that. There's no alternative to the customer, irrespective. And I might be sounding a little romantic on it, but seeing being there, seeing that, and it kind of clicks the best for people. If you have the best customers here, you have investors pulling for you rather than you pushing for them. So yeah. Sure. I'm going to give it a shot. I'll just echo what Aafke was trying to say. In fact, that was what I was going to say, that everyone focuses on raising funding from investors. But at the end of the day, your business thrives on serving your end consumers. If you really focus on that, the revenue in some cases is possible enough. You can bootstrap your company to scale. That was one. Secondly, even in terms of debt, there are smaller venture debt players now, especially in the impact space. Although there are only a handful, they will also offer investment support to companies. Equity is the most expensive form of capital to raise. And although debt is not suited for all businesses, but if your company is, go ahead and explore those options because it's a cheaper form of raising capital. That was the second point. And thirdly, when it comes to financial and social returns that you were talking about, in my opinion, the best impact companies are the ones that can, where there's a positive correlation between your social returns and your financial returns. Meaning, as you scale, as your top line grows, because your business model is built in that particular way, your impact will scale as well. And you don't have to give up one for the other. Of course, this is a beautiful statement to make, it's very difficult to implement and to put it into practice. But the ones that do it, the ones that nail that product market fit and scale it up, scale revenues and their impact skills, that's the dream, that's the goal of an impact investor or anybody that's looking at the space as well, where you're creating a win-win situation for yourself as the entrepreneur for the customers that you're catering to and for the other stakeholder, which is your investor base. Absolutely. I think those few things, I think that fact that your impact should scale with your financial gains as well, I think that's a very key point of what you said. I think if people can really implement or work towards that, I think with all of the support that you guys provide beyond just money, I think these entrepreneurs can definitely, definitely do that. Rasna, your thoughts on it. I'm going to second or I guess third, what I think initially, R.K. was talking about in terms of how much, let's say equity funding you raise is not necessarily a measure of success. And I think we definitely have examples of where it hasn't worked out well. The only thing I'd like to add is while there is equity, there's debt, there's even grants. If I were to broadly categorize the types of funding entrepreneurs could raise, especially at an early stage, I think it's really important to first identify what is the funding that you need or basically what is the requirement of your funding and therefore, which is the best fit for it, right? Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs tend to miss out on that and kind of go for either equity, debt or grants without realizing the uses of that fund, right? And I think there is sort of like a right fitment when it comes to that. And it's not necessary, like I think everyone else was also saying that you either raise equity or debt or anything for that matter. It really, it needs to be driven from a need or how much you can actually leverage it and it does it kind of meet with your future objectives instead of just being like, okay, I need to raise funds because that's what the system is asking for, right? I think that's a notion that we really need to start breaking down and it's really not a measure of success. Just from Upaya's point of view as, I mean, the way we look at returns and things like, I think I can safely say that we are an impact first investor, which means that we don't necessarily, at least as of now, although we are looking at impact and we kind of look at, let's say, thousand jobs by each company over a period of five to seven years, which also means that they also need to be financially sustainable and viable to be able to get there and scale to that. Our focus is definitely on ensuring that the impact goals are met first and financial stability is still key, but honestly, we so far have never put across a specific ROI when we invest. We have certain criteria that there are definitely things that we track, but there's also been an example where one of our portfolio companies that we invested in changed the fundamental of what they wanna do in terms of, they moved away from the impact and we actually exited from that company. So for us, that really becomes a focus is because also we are kind of raising money and putting in money with that particular thesis in mind. So this is not to say that the financial stability or sustainability is not important. I think it's crucial because without that, you're not able to scale the impact to that level, but we do look at it from a lens of impact. And I think for entrepreneurs, earlier, like you're going around speaking to different investors, it's really important to understand what each of these investors are looking for. Everyone has a thesis. Everyone has certain segments or an angle that they wanna look at. I think it's important for investors also to do a little bit of homework to be able to make the right fit, right? Because if someone, like let's say an educational or an attack company comes to a pire, I mean, you have to know that this is probably not gonna be a fit, right? I mean, it's a very generic example, but I think it's important for entrepreneurs to really know who you're speaking to because of alignment in terms of whether the investor aligns with your vision, your mission and what your impact is going to be is super crucial. Thank you for sharing that, Rassima. I think all of the viewpoints that have been shared here come from a common thread. That yes, ROI is something that is expected. And obviously, like I think impact, like with the Pire, you've been doing some amazing work. And as you shared that it's important for social enterprises and the reason that they exist also is to change the norm in certain ways and inspire people to do good, obviously. So before I take the last question, if any one of you folks out there have questions, either you can put it in the chat box or if you're watching it live, you can just comment and we'll take it up. And Anupam is also here, so I'll let her take the closing comments. So just a quick, maybe a sentence of an answer here is, So what do you, like, what are your thoughts? Like, has the sentiment towards impact investing changed with COVID in place? Have people become more serious or people have started, like, what's the status like? Maybe from all of you. Rassima, you could take a lead. You've been investing in impact for a while now. Sure, I mean, if I were to just put it in a sentence or a couple of sentences, I think there's definitely been a shift in terms of more sort of visibility on the space. Especially towards health care, and I think from a bias point of view, because we talk about jobs and livelihoods, just given how much of that has changed, I think it's definitely kind of made us realize that this is even more important and we need to do more of this. But I think there's sector in general, again, like I said, I think there's definitely there's a little more light thrown on this, but I'm a bit unsure in terms of the seriousness of different investors to kind of really look at the space. But I think generally there's definitely been a shift. Quickly from my side, I think there is definitely an increased awareness amongst people that we cannot solve the world's problems or cannot depend on a particular class of investors to solve this. This is our world, this is our society, this is our planet. So at the end of the day, our money can make a difference. Where I see India going maybe in the next 10 years is where the vest is today, where a retail investor like you and I can actually invest into impact companies. That's where the vest is today. You can find these early stage companies and put in your money there. For us right now that's more restricted to late stage ESG sort of funds, but hopefully 10 years down the line, we see that open up to us retail investors as well. So there is not only intention, like I mentioned earlier, but there is an ability to actually act and direct your money towards companies that are not only generating a profit, but are also generating profit with the purpose. There's just two figures that kind of hit me when you asked me that particular question. The United Nations essentially put up a certain requirement that sustainability development goals would require an additional somewhere around 2.5 trillion dollars which needs to come from private sources. It cannot be government and it cannot be philanthropic sourcing that would serve up that particular requirement. And all that and more has possibly been accelerated because of the events in the last one, one and a half years across the globe because all of a sudden, there is a certain sense of pushing more asset-based capital into the ecosystem. There are more asset managers around. There are more enterprises who are looking at matrices which can make their investments a little more risk-mitigated if I may put it that way. And then that has all happened because they've understood that however much separated we might feel in our own silos across the globe, we were all in a similar predicament because of a certain simple virus. So it has kind of united us in a very interesting way and it kind of allows us to think beyond just the returns that this particular community used to look at. I generally find optimism in the grimace of scenarios and possibly March or November, for that matter of fact, November 2019 when this outbreak happened first is essentially just accelerated us by about five years to think about world truly as a global village. And then when you do that, you essentially feel a little more connected. You essentially feel a little more responsible for the sustained development goals. So possibly that is where we are headed. Obviously there would always be a preference to better returns because nobody gets the mula easy but there is certainly a positive correlation that has happened. You know, just to kind of build on the responses that Rachna Akila and Akiba have given, if the thought behind this question is as an entrepreneur, is this a good time to start out, especially as an impact entrepreneur? I would say there couldn't be a better time. The ecosystem is growing. We have wonderful people like Akiba, Akila, Rachna, the Vrukshika system, helping specifically for impact entrepreneurs and there's a ton of money around looking to, either for capital returns to investment companies or from the perspective of impact as well. So could not be a better time to become an impact entrepreneur. So if you're thinking about it and you have some legend, good idea in hand, no better time to jump in. Absolutely. I think, Watsil, you have put it together very well. I think for a lot of entrepreneurs who are just sitting on the edge that, should I jump or not, I think this is the time and folks like Rachna, Akila, Akiba, Watsil are there to support you. We've got a couple of questions. One is from Sarang, that what kind of deep tech startups the panel reckons would have a greater impact going ahead. Does anyone want to take a shot at that? Anything to do with health and the idea behind deep tech associated with synthetic biology, which has kind of taken off in a certain way because of the acceleration that has happened around health solutioning. Especially at the bottom of the pyramid because what we kind of miss out generally in the name of medical research and medical referencing is the fact that we do not innovate enough for the bottom of the pyramid. And then that's possibly the most profitable sector that you could actually look at if you just invert your process economics or the macroeconomics calculations because that is where the penetration is fastest if not the most viral. And yet it does not require as much convincing or as much awareness or as much educating as is deemed important for other models. So you could be writing data algorithms for the rest of your life and you might not crack soft AI for a guarantee or a hard AI algorithm for a guarantee. But for sure if you're working on a strain and that strain saves 300 million lives tomorrow you have created the right kind of impact going ahead. So health tech for sure and that too with the bottom of approach seems to be where biological research or biotech research is essentially focused on and I think deep tech with IoT playing a very important part in all of that will be where most of the attention with regards to impact is going to be is how I take it. So I see a few opportunities in the impact space. One would be manufacturing processes. I think there's a lot of scope in improving manufacturing across the board. So if you have something which can improve those processes nothing like it, two reasons. One is it could either improve the scale at which we build important stuff we manufacture important stuff like vaccines or mobile phones even which are critical to life today and hence that can have a big impact. The other thing that I look at is also filling up knowledge gaps with the internet. There is a ton of access that everybody has but not necessarily to the right information. So while this is not necessarily deep tech but we've invested in two companies filling the information gap. One is trying to do that in the women's health space and the other in the cancer space and that is a really good opportunity. There are a billion people in India around 500 or 600 billion have access to internet but not necessarily they all have access to the right information. So filling up that information gap is a really important and worthy cause to build upon today. Thank you. Do you have any comments here? I think also one area where it could have a great impact is climate and everything relating to climate. Especially in agriculture we're seeing that in India as well there is a huge untapped opportunity even generally from a broader perspective there's a lot of special funds only being built to target particularly issues relating to the climate and a lot of the IoT devices to measure the change or the impact that they're changing whether it's having and no industries aren't touched right now because of climate change. I think there's a lot of potential for newer technologies to impact the environment side of the world we're living in. Yeah, I think the broad sectors have already been covered and I don't think I have anything specific to add but I guess there's definitely scope and also re-looking at some of the existing sectors and seeing how you can re-imagine some of these processes and systems to reach a larger set of people as well. Yeah, I think like a lot of traditional sectors the impact on entrepreneurs primarily look at I think that could do a lot with technology tied up to them which can definitely increase accessibility at a lot of different levels. I think even as an organization we like although we are non-profit we invest heavily into our technology side of things where we're trying to come up with tools or processes that can help us really scale our efforts across and I think the pandemic has been a blessing for us guys in certain ways when we could actually pilot one of our education platforms and that has helped us really not just scale our work but really reach people that we couldn't have without like if it wasn't there like with the entire lockdowns in place I think accessibility was a major, major challenge. So yes, I think so in the interest of time I'll take a few closing comments so very interesting discussion here for me I think I have four pointers to take away today and it's one is like I think measuring impact is very important whatever metrics that as a social entrepreneur that you've been doing out there whatever amazing work that you're doing out there in the world I think it is important to identify the metrics and really measure them to the tip because when you go out asking for money that is going to be the discussion in the room. Along with that I think ROI be it capital or social is essential and as entrepreneurs we need to be very careful on how are we providing that return out there to the investors that we are going to be working with and given the entire pandemic situation a lot of people becoming more understanding the problems out there seeing the world in such a scenario I think a lot of people have come together have started putting in money towards causes towards initiatives that help people at large and I think what Akip also said that in a very unique way the entire pandemic has brought us together because no one, no part of the world has been spared of that and with deep tech I think health climate information information accessibility are a few sectors where it could be game changing. So that's something for me a few closing thoughts from each one of you here. Akila, why don't you go first? Yes. Sure. So closing thoughts from me I think most of the audience you're either not thinking about building in the space is that don't forget why you started if you've already started doing what you're doing never forget why you started avoid mission drift to the extent you can remember that you can balance both sides of the equation and always put your customer first especially if you're catering to the segment if you put your customer first you'll always make sure you're solving the right problems which then in turn impact your revenues and when you have a good healthy study you know financial metrics there are always investors lining up to put in money to your company and for all you know you might not even need it because you can actually build a sustainable business on your own so build with passion, build with grit the road ahead may not be easy but you know that's why you show out your resilience and you really stick to what you're doing and yeah hopefully you make it and hopefully give back the lives of a lot of people in and around your community and also the planet and thank you to Rukhs, thank you Abhijeet, Arke, Brachna and Vatsal it was really great being a part of this panel and I'm sure all of us have a lot to take back from this session as well so thank you this has been a pleasure so the last one who goes has the most difficult task so please go ahead so maybe I'll chime in then you know I think as on a closing note entrepreneurs life is tough and especially those who do it with a mission not just of kind of creating value for the self but creating value for more and more people and for society it's a very very tough job to undertake so really if any of you are thinking of it or doing it, I really respect you guys and salute you wish you all the best and you know I think with the ecosystem we have feel free to reach out to any of us my email is whatsapp100x.vc if I can help in any way or if any of us can help in any way would be more than happy to do so thank you so much for having me here thanks Abhijeet, Arke, Brachna, Arke and team and the Rukhs team for having me today thanks man great so I think from my end this closing thoughts I completely agree with what Arke said in terms of don't forget your why I think that's fundamentally the most important thing for any entrepreneur and I think a lot of it also comes back to just maybe back to basics like focus on building a strong business model I think when you really find the product market fit, your revenue model fit that's where it kind of really comes together so I think the focus needs to be on that and especially if you're just starting up at an early stage be open to feedback and pivoting because I think over the last few years I think just working with early stage entrepreneurs the biggest thing is that you have to constantly keep changing pandemic or not pandemic I think that's a necessity so just keeping your eyes open to what is the constant feedback that you're getting from your customers, from other stakeholders and taking in obviously what is relevant I think it's important to do that I mean it also means I don't get stuck on one idea or the solution that you come up with it's important to realize that if you need to change it, it's completely okay to change it as long as you really know the problem that you're looking to solve whether it's for people at the bottom of the pyramid or for your customers I think it's fundamental to remember that and yeah I mean I think if I had to share my two cents that's probably it especially for entrepreneurs that are at an early stage Yeah and Abhijit thank you and thanks to Rukhch also as well and I think this was really an interesting session and it was great interacting with the rest of you also Thank you, thank you so much I think we need to get on a call soon Aakev Yeah I thought of a line while Akhila and Akhila and Watsalwa speaking and that was that there are two words which define our journey there's one which is ordinary and the other is a special and both of these words are going to live with us irrespective of whatever we impact or whatever we build your ordinary till the time it remains an idea and your special till the time you keep executing the journey between ordinary to special or the extraordinary is essentially why we are so special as entrepreneurs or we are so special as people who are taking building in entrepreneurship keep setting the new ordinary standard and the new extraordinary standard for yourself and you keep on getting new reasons to be alive to be essentially breathing with your idea because because the day we stop doing this transition between being ordinary to creating that special impact or that special moment for ourselves our teams, our stakeholders, our customers is the day when we die and like Watsalwa had put up in one of his the idea is to essentially survive through and sustain through the ability to impact the ability to transition between the ordinary and the special so we should treat ourselves special there's no reason that we shouldn't we've taken those plunges of or the leap of faiths that are required congratulations on every stakeholder who has been able to do that but keep setting the bar higher each time making your effort or your eye for that problem ordinary each time till the time you find the execution to match so that's about it every entrepreneurial stream that you work on is essentially going to create one or the other impact don't over think yourself, don't over intellectualize in certain situations it kind of comes back to haunt you and that is where the translation keeps on happening whether you're ordinary or extraordinary it hardly matters and don't run for the gimmicks there are a lot of gimmicks around you can better let them be and then be around with what made you start in the first place so that's about it and we have lost our moderator again right we have lost Abhijeet once again thank you Abhijeet Akhilia thank you Watsal and thank you Rajna for being here for giving your precious time this was a quite interesting panel discussion that I have been to I definitely like what you guys said so okay Abhijeet is back again he's trying his level best okay okay I think the discussion is completed so thank you very much thank you we can thank you thank you everyone thanks everyone thanks all take care