In this episode we meet Sumitra Pasupathy, who is the Global Partnerships Director at Ashoka. Ashoka is absolutely legendary in the world of social entrepreneurship. And it's based on the idea that the most powerful force for good in the world is a social entrepreneur. Sumi is a social entrepreneur and the Co-founder and Director of Playeum, an innovative education content and service provider centered on creativity for children and families based in Singapore. Sumitra was most recently the Program Lead for The Changemaker Journey, a six-month capacity-building pilot program led by Ashoka and funded by Google.org, benefitting 28 non-profit organizations from India, Indonesia and Singapore, aimed at fast-tracking digital adoption and tech-based solutions as they pivot the way they work.

Today I have a very special guest for you dialling in from Bangkok, Thailand. She leads the incubation programs for young entrepreneurs in over 24 countries at the Youth Co:Lab, an initiative co-led by the UNDP Asia-Pacific and Citi Foundation to economically empower the next generation in the region, through youth entrepreneurship and government innovation.

Prior to joining the United Nations Development Programme, she founded various tech startups and social enterprises to economically empower the marginalised, and mobilised the youth to travel and learn. She studied business and soon realised the power of technology when managing companies, hence later learnt to become a front-end developer, then emerged to be a software consultant to develop analytics solutions for international corporates. She has a deep passion for future skills education and financial inclusion for women, and is always intrigued to learn about new ways to advance development through her travels. 

Today you’re in for a treat. I have a really interesting guest for you who works in the impact investment space. Now you might have heard about impact investing before, but for many people this is quite a new and up and coming area of investing. So, we’re going to find out more about what exactly it’s all about.

Kevin is the Head of Impact Investments at Lonsdale Capital. Through Lonsdale, Kevin works with high-impact startups and social enterprises to scale their business. Lonsdale provides capital investments for seed stage to series A companies who have impact tied to the core of their business.

Kevin believes that high impact companies and social enterprises are the business models of the future, where providing social and/or environmental returns will become a competitive advantage for improved financial returns.

Prior to Lonsdale, Kevin has worked in the social enterprise, impact investment ecosystem for 8 years. His experience spans from working with high-impact startups, social enterprises, intermediaries, SE incubators, impact investors, MNCs, and government bodies.  

Kevin and I actually go back quite a few years, so this is a pretty packed episode about everything from impact investing to impact measurement, and the various definitions of a social enterprise. We cover how Lonsdale determines what to invest in and how Kevin thinks about the future of impact investing as a whole. We also go into how Kevin’s varied experience working with high-impact startups, social enterprises, intermediaries, social enterprise incubators, impact investors, MNCs, and government bodies has influenced the way he looks at impact as a whole. As always, we wrap up with 3 things.