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.

IMG_0529

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)
December 4, 2014 2014, Impact Investing, Sustainability, TBLI Conference 1 Comment on Impact Investor and Social Entrepreneur

Doing God’s work or destroying my company

In a recent interview in the Financial Times, Lloyd Blankfein: chairman and CEO, said “I am doing Gods work”. This is by far the funniest line I have heard in a long time. In fact, nearly all my relations in the financial sector fell off their chair laughing. After, regaining consciousness from laughter, I started to think more carefully about Goldman and the other mega banks that survived directly and indirectly via taxpayer bailout.
Warren Buffet said ““It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Reputation is the basis for all companies, particularly those operating in the financial sector. It is about trust.  It seems that we often forget, with respect to financial bubbles but also with respect to reputation meltdowns.
If we think back the the Vietnam war, Dow Chemical comes to mind. They manufactured weapons of war like Napalm, Agent Orange and defoliants. Their reputation and association with the Vietnam War was so entrenched that very few college students wanted to work for Dow. The brand experienced a meltdown, and needed to be addressed in order to assure the continuity of the company. Now, Dow Chemical is seen as a sustainable leader in the chemical sector. In the late 90’s, Shell experienced a similar reputation destruction that impacted their ability to hire staff. Brent Spar and its activities in Nigeria hurt the Shell brand so badly,  that the best and the brightest didn’t want to work there. Top cvs weren’t flowing, and those who did work there were not ambassadors for the company out of fear and shame. Shell woke up.

Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, RBS, JP Morgan, ABNAmro, ING, and dozens others will experience the same reputation meltdown as Dow Chemical and Shell. There is a difference this time. These companies received massive support, directly and indirectly from taxpayers, who will be paying the bill  for decades to save the financial sector. On top of that, these same banks are paying out billions in bonuses, again directly and indirectly from taxpayer bailouts. The best and the brightest won’t want to be associated with “servants of the lord” . Governments under pressure from the electorate won’t allocate lucrative financial engineering jobs to them for government projects, and bond offerings.  If this group of “valueless banks” are seen to have profited, supported and facilitated the financial meltdown they will have a hard time to get customers. Going forward the gang to which you belong will say as much about your own reputation as your own direct actions.

Watch the financial reputation Tsunami hit. It will have massive impact, and no amount of commercials or social entrepreneur sound bites, or minor “green” asset allocations will change perception. We need farmers and not hunters to turn this around. I don’t even thing that Lloyd’s boss (God) can help him.

December 1, 2009 2011 1 Comment on Doing God’s work or destroying my company