Pratyusha Bhattacharya
Satyam Pandey
Jai Agrawal
Kaarthikeyan D
Rishab Srivastava
Goa Institute of Management
Divya Singhal
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Alsisar Impact mainly focuses on fundamental sectors which are education, affordable education, affordable healthcare, renewable energy, waste management, financial inclusion. These are like one of the fundamental building blocks of any society. They were able to capitalize money in these ecosystems. Secondly, they had been actually one of the only participant in South Asia who kind of formulated the UNDP SDG guidelines for private equity funds globally.
They were working together with some entities like KKR, Tamashek, BlackRock and FOMO, leapfrog and others which are like globally big asset managers. "And we were one of the only entity from South Asia advising you NDP to roll out the SDG rules. Now the SDG goals that they met were, livelihood and development of the local ecosystem", shared Mr. Sharma.
One of the small but the most significant innovation they brought in the investing world was something called place based investing. So they only invest in support entrepreneurs from local ecosystem. So if we talk about Kashmir, they will only support a Kashmiri local there.
For example if they go to northeast and somebody from North India, who is a Marwari coming and having a great amount of business and flourishing, they don't support them. They support somebody from North East.
Investing in local businesses is one of its first kind in the Asian region, where they are backing people with a thematic side of place based investing.
Mr Anuj Sharma, the founder of Alsisar Impact, comes from a very small place. He came with lots of hope. Coming from middle class and also from a small town, he had dreams of making it big. He realized that there was a lot of scope to change the world but later on he came to know that he could only change himself to be able to change the world. That's the way we have. So the inspiration is all about like how we perceive different walks of life and your experiences as well so.
His actual journey started before his birth, so his father actually, when he became 21, he inherited a big track of land of around 26 acres inherited a house and a temple, and he donated everything. By the time he became 25 and he started out his journey from scratch. And the same thing my grandfather ordered to do the same. So the whole philosophy was giving back to the society should not be when you have leftover.
The idea was wait for the surplus and then give to the society, then it is left to one that's it's a waste that you're trying to do. But the way he saw the whole ecosystem is like you need to start working towards the society when you by yourself have scarcity of resources. And that's how you build things. And it is also important to give back to us future as well. Not to today.
Short term effect of this kind of innovation is that people are now taking stock of situation and have started investing . They also consider it to be a kind of a thing to address or kind of associated with. For example that in Kashmir when they did this startup where they supported and invested, it kind of changed the whole perception of how Kashmir should be looked upon as investing destination.
Long term effect of this innovation is bringing peace in the regions and bringing prosperity to the local ecosystem. They are making the local entrepreneurs more resilient and sustainable.
He took an example , if we come from a region where we have a house and we have a mango tree in that house.
If we have actually been born in that house and brought up in that same house, we will never be the person who will cut that mango tree because we have seen it growing and being existence for the last 20 years.
But, if you choose to sell the house someday, the buyer will not have any affinity for that house. They will come and cut the tree and make buildings out of it. Similarly ,the relationship of climate change and the resilience of the locals is interconnected. Through economic upliftment, we need to support locals, then only it can go to the next.
Alsisar Impact is redefining the impact investing narrative in South Asia. It is catalyzing work through four complementing intersections: Advisory; Advocacy; Frontier market incubation, and convergence of 'Academia and Practitioners' in the Development space. AI is South Asia's leading transaction advisory firm in Impact investing and Social Enterprise landscape. They have advised by far the largest number of impact investing transactions in this part of the world with unparalleled track record of ~15 years in the space. With a passionate team of Due Diligence, structuring experts, legal, finance, regulatory, sustainability, ESG and strategy professionals, they believe that to facilitate transactions in developing geographies, there is a need to think out of the 'box' to 'ease' doing business or facilitate development and growth capital while respecting specific Geography’s complex regulations. While there is a good ecosystem of Impact Investors, social enterprise and incubators, there is a big void of 'facilitators ' or 'catalyst' or 'quality service providers who make this ecosystem tick and keep it going. Through their spirited and motivated focused team they are making a difference in Impact investing and social enterprise landscape.
From being the founder of market leading transaction advisory and structuring firm in impact investing, he has brought a unique unparalleled preposition to global investment funds, Foundations & International corporates who are looking to invest in South Asia. Has done trendsetting in India's first Masala bond privately placed for a US based foundation for a social enterprise. Also, facilitated varied debt, equity and blended finance structures for entities based in US and Europe while investing in India.
His passion is to foster social entrepreneurship across geographies & to facilitate future leaders and entrepreneurs specially from underprivileged and underserved geographies. Social equality, gender lens & access to education are equally significant passion including Teaching. Learnings/travel/collaboration in the process is an added advantage.
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Anuj Sharma, Founder
Alsisar Impact is focused on investing and listing the capitalisation of startups from Frontier market and conflict zones. They are also focused on advocacy for social sector and are trying to bring academia and practitioners together. So these are the four verticals they currently have. They started out more than a decade before in the year 2008 when they came back to India to kind of channelize their energy and also focus on the upcoming segment called impact investing.