In an exclusive interaction with Times Now Digital, Naina Subberwal Batra, CEO of AVPN highlights how India holds the key to unclocking social investment impact and mentions that if Asia and India could redirect trillions in capital, the priority should be women’s economic empowerment. Given below is an excerpt of the interaction.

Q. Asia attracts enormous capital, but how much of it is actually reaching the most marginalised as that really is the need of the hour?

A. Very little of it is reaching the marginalised. The challenge is not a shortage of capital. It’s actually connecting the right capital to the right opportunities at the right time. I think the problem we have right now is that capital does flow. Capital flows through philanthropy, capital flows through CSR, capital flows through impact investing, but it flows in silos. It flows with limited alignment and it does not work with intermediaries on the ground with implementing organisations on the ground who are actually directly working with the marginalised. So to answer your question, less than, I would say less than 20 percent actually reaches those that it’s meant to reach.

Q. So how can we ensure that more reaches for those that it is meant to reach-the marginalised?

A.So I think we need to create more transparency and more trust. The biggest reason that philanthropic capital or social capital does not reach these communities is that there is an opacity surrounding the mechanism of how that money is to get there. Usually what happens in India specifically, we look at the fact that $27 billion was mobilised through CSR money alone. Now, this money through corporate CSR goes through only via a group of implementing organisations that have visibility either with the corporate headquarters or are present in the large metro cities or have been working with a particular corporate for a number of years. If you are trying to reach newer groups, you’re trying to reach marginalised communities in hard to reach areas.

Q. If you could redirect trillions of capital today in Asia and India, where would you place that money?

A. I would place it for empowering women’s economic livelihoods. I feel that is where the need of the hour is. If you can actually make a woman financially sustainable and be very important, financially literate, you are actually providing for the next two generations of her family because she will then ensure that the money is spent sensibly. You are also looking at supporting women entrepreneurs who have proven to be incredibly credit worthy. If you look at microfinance statistics, you will find that women are the ones that default the least on loans. You will also find that in terms of productivity, in terms of actually looking at agriculture, women are the ones that are most involved in these industries, which are predominant in India today. So if I had the money, I would put it towards women’s economic empowerment.

Q. What is really the India focus at the moment then?

A. The AVPN conference for the first time is coming to India and we’re really excited about it coming to India. The reason is that India plays a very important role in the world stage. India with 1.5 billion people, if India does not meet the SDGs and India does not figure out how to use AI wealth, nobody else in Asia is going to be able to do that. Asia has 66 percent of the world’s population. If Asia doesn’t figure it out, the rest of the world can just go away and forget about it. So India holds the key to a lot of what happens and how we use private capital in partnership with the Government. India holds the key for not just India, but for the rest of the world.

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