Fundraising Thursday, 9 May 2013 Panelists: Simon Chadwick (Moderator), Chief Executive Officer, Asian Venture Philanthropy Network

Eric Savage, Co-founder & Partner, Unitus Capital Vishal Mehta, Co-founder & Partner, Lok Advisory Services Dien Yuen, Managing Director, Kordant Philanthropy Advisors Mykolas Rambus, Chief Executive Officer, Wealth-X Summary: This panel was focused on fundraising by venture philanthropy firms and the potential sources for such funding. Dien, who has 16 years of fundraising experience, talked about Diaspora donors, who like to be personally involved and liked transparency. She said these donors are usually quite specific in terms of where and how they would want capital to be deployed. Fundraising becomes significantly easier if investors actually make returns from social investments. Eric talked about Unitus having helped facilitate eight businesses in the last year and registering an average return of 3.8x with a median IRR of 37 percent. He did add that sometimes there is a dilemma for an investor. As a mainstream investor, the choice is simple and the objective is returns. On the other hand, for investors who are somewhere in the middle, the question they sometimes are confronted with is whether they want to make money or whether they want to save the world. Mykolas said that Asia is at the beginning of a 15 year wealth creation period. In these 15 years, he said, Asia will have more ultra high net worth individuals than the West. One of the issues, he pointed out, was that in general, people in Asia tend to work till very late in their lives and as such, they have less time for philanthropy.

Lok, which manages two funds sized $42 million and $65 million respectively, has enjoyed the backing of multilateral institutions. It has returned between 60 percent and 70 percent of its first fund back to investors. Vishal talked about how different sectors need different impact measures and how impact cannot be looked at through a common lens. For example, he said, the education and the healthcare sectors are at different stages in India. One of the questions related to a tussle between mainstream investors and social investors that may have invested in the same company. Vishal said there is often a conflict of interest and it is not always pleasant, though it is possible that different kinds of investors can work together to achieve goals. Eric pointed out that social investors get their stakes diluted over time if the investment is successful, and hence there is a need for a founder who has strong social credentials and aspirations.

The panellists also focused on how as investors, they have helped enterprises beyond just providing them with capital. This is usually done in the form of assisting with human resource requirements and through experience in capturing impact.