Impact Investor and Social Entrepreneur

Recently I was invited by one of our keynote speakers, Arvind Narula, to visit his company in Changrai, Thailand. Arvind is a successful social entrepreneur who has clearly shown you can do large scale for profit Impact Investing projects and have a clear, measurable positive impact on society and the environment. One of his companies, Urmatt, is the largest, contract farming, organic rice producer in Thailand. Urmatt also develops the value add, branding, and distribution of the end product. Arvind has also started Hill Tribe Organics for organic egg production and expanded Urmat’s product line through nutritionally enhanced rice noodle production.

It was a great inspiration visiting the production facility of  Hill Tribe Organics and also seeing his brand new rice noodle factory. His team were all engaged, passionate, and committed. They, like Arvind were working at the coal face, as they say, to improve people’s live and achieve market rate returns for the investors.  Arvind’s passion and commitment in alleviating poverty for the Hill Tribes and his rice farmers through sustainable livelihood (organic egg production, organic rice production) was a great inspiration. The amount of work to achieve his goal is overwhelming. Best part was meeting the chickens who seemed to enjoy picking at our feet(see photo below) and were extremely friendly. What was even more thrilling was that an investment from one of the TBLI Conference Europe sponsors came through the week we were visiting.

Arvind clearly stands out as a successful social entrepreneur. He takes a very pragmatic, simple, low key solution to a significant problem, and just gets on with the job. No fanfare. He focusses on digging holes and avoids cutting ribbons. I asked him what is his big vision. Without hesitation he said “ExpandTribe Organics to all the Hill Tribes in Asia and Latin America”. Go Arvind. We look forward to hosting a TBLI gathering in Changrai.

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Arvind Narula’S Keynote Speech TBLI CONFERENCE EUROPE 2014.

TBLI Conference Series 2015 

If you weren’t able to attend TBLI CONFERENCE EUROPE 2014, in Amsterdam, you can access the videos and presentations here

Our ESG and Impact Investing educational outreach continues in 2015 with conferences in Chicago, Singapore, Copenhagen and Zurich. I would like to ask for your help  by sponsoring, attending or speaking  For further information on programs, speaking opportunities and past events, visit TBLI Website .

TBLI CONFERENCE @BOOTH/KELLOGG 2015
23 January 2015- Chicago / USA
Hosted by Kellogg School of Management & Booth School of Business
TBLI CONFERENCE ASIA 2015
29 & 30 April 2015-Singapore
Hosted by Insead
TBLI CONFERENCE NORDIC 2015
15 & 16 June 2015-Copenhagen / Denmark
Hosted by Copenhagen Business School
TBLI CONFERENCE USA 2015
September (dates to be confirmed)
New York, New York
TBLI CONFERENCE EUROPE 2015
November (to be held in Zurich)

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