Role of Ecosystem Building & Policy in Conscious Investments
to bring long lasting change for the communities, nature and animals.
Lately, I have been spending a lot of time understanding the technological impact on the human race (heard of humane tech?), policy impact on society (how social finance is creating better policy interventions?), ecosystem development impact on creating a market, and impact of communities/tribes to bring social and behavioral change. Hence, I thought of putting my thoughts on the linkages between ecosystem development, venture Investing, and venture building.
I did ecosystem development work in India in the K-12 sector with the sole purpose of helping the affordable private school ecosystem mature in India by bringing various stakeholders together, like impact funds, foundations, ed-tech ventures (for-profit and not-for-profits), and corporates (CSR). I did this when I was at Gray Matters Capital, and we did it in partnership with
, a public policy think tank based out of Delhi, India. It was a phenomenal experience what they have done with NISA - National Independent School Alliance, Parth Shah is the real man behind this. Though I was involved only in the initial period of 9-12 months and then later moved into the investment side, it still gave me a great foundation. This later helped me devise an impact-investment thesis by determining the proper gaps existing in the Indian education system (across the value chain) and all the fillers private ventures can fill at scale.Why Ecosystem Development?
These four books have helped me shape my understanding of the holistic approach to “profit with purpose” or “conscious” venture investing →
It’s essential to see ecosystem work as an integral piece of any early-stage venture fund, as most of the time, venture funds focus on investing in cutting-edge technologies or ventures serving a new market that might be underserved or unserved.
Ecosystem Development is about working towards a more robust market approach by creating self-regulatory bodies. This can be useful in places where the govt. Regulations are already tight or might get tightened in the future, it provides a safety net for the players to rely on and their voices to be heard, and this kind of platform creates access to the market for the portfolio ventures by bringing in awareness.
Recently, I was having a conversation with Jinesh Shah, Chief Investment Officer of Ahimsa VC, an impact VC fund investing in alternative protein and materials in India. Apart from investments, their work also revolves a lot around policy, advocacy, and ecosystem development because the market for plant-based foods is still in the nascent stages, and the awareness of these products in the market is low. Their work serves the purpose of advocacy and awareness among consumers and provides rapid prototyping, feedback, and access to the market to the portfolio companies.
There can be several areas where ecosystem development does not only help create access to the market and shape policy, awareness-creation, and driving impact at scale. It’s essential to learn from nature while being an ecosystem builder because any small change in the system can affect it positively or negatively, so we need to be conscious of our actions as an ecosystem builder.
We need more ecosystem builders in building new ventures, using technologies like blockchain, building communities, and impact and venture to invest, as it helps shape the ecosystem by acting as system engineers and community builders. They are an integral part of the solution-making and can drive a positive vision for this world.
We need to learn and derive inspiration from Wolves to improve as ecosystem builders and change agents to bring a long-lasting impact. It’s a classic example of learning from nature and mimicking it in our systems or bio-mimicking.
Wolves are, in a true sense, ecosystem builders:
“The Wolves changed the behavior of the rivers. They began to meander less. There was less soil erosion. The channels narrowed. More pools formed. More riffle sections. All of which were great for wildlife habitats. The rives change in response to the wolves. And the reason was that the regenerating forests stabilized the banks so that they collapsed less often. So the rivers became more fixed in their course……… So the wolves, in small number, transformed not just the ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park – This huge area of land….. But also, its physical geography.” ~ How Wolves Change Rivers.
For the full version of the documentary, please refer to this link.
“Ultimately, wolves benefit humans by maintaining balanced, healthy ecosystems.”
There is another resource that we can derive a lot of inspiration from by Starre Vartan, what can wolf packs teach us about being better humans?
What do you think about the importance of ecosystem building while doing conscious or impact investing? Share it in the comments or with me at sagar@idexaccelerator.com.