SRI360 | Sustainable & Responsible Investing, Impact Investing, ESG, Socially Responsible Investing

SRI360 explores how professional and institutional investors use impact investing and sustainable finance to shape real-world outcomes. Each episode features an in-depth conversation with a leading investor in public or private equities, public or private debt, venture capital, or real assets. We focus on the mechanics of investing: how strategies are designed, how capital is allocated, how impact is achieved and measured, and where incentives succeed, or fail, within asset-owner systems. If you want clear, honest insight into the future of sustainable & responsible investing from the people shaping it, this show is your competitive edge. Learn more at SRI360.com .

SRI360 | Sustainable & Responsible Investing, Impact Investing, ESG, Socially Responsible Investing is a business podcast hosted by Scott Arnell, with 143 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Scott Arnell hosts SRI360 | Sustainable & Responsible Investing, Impact Investing, ESG, Socially Responsible Investing, a business show with 143 episodes published.

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  Episode #143

  Base of the Pyramid to Pension Fund: What Four Emerging-Market Funds Actually Returned | BlueOrchard · BII · IIX · EPIC World (#143)

  Aug 17, 202656 min

  Get the latest updates on Sustainable & Responsible Investing at: https://sri360.com/newsletter/ From a $200 microloan in Peru to a bond sold almost exclusively to pension funds in Singapore: four emerging-market funds, one question almost no one answers in public — what actually returned? Impact investing has a disclosure problem. The frameworks multiplied. AUM keeps growing. But deal-level outcomes — loss rates, exits, the defaults that didn't happen — almost never get discussed openly. In this compilation episode, they do. Philipp Mueller, who at the time of recording was CEO of BlueOrchard, runs the world's largest microfinance fund - $2.4 billion deployed through a single-intermediary model across emerging and frontier markets, with 110 staff across Lima, Nairobi, Tbilisi, and Singapore. Nick O'Donohoe spent seven years as CEO of British International Investment, where a 2% return target became a 5% actual return — in an environment where almost every African country went through major macroeconomic or political turmoil during his tenure. Robert Kraybill, CIO and Managing Director at Impact Investment Exchange, built the Women's Livelihood Bond, six issuances, $228 million raised, listed on the Singapore Exchange, with the sixth bond sold almost exclusively to pension funds. And Jyotsna Krishnan, CEO and Co-Founder of EPIC World, has spent her career mapping the 70% of India's population that remains nearly invisible to global allocators and building the data infrastructure that makes it investable. One argument connects all four: the risk is mispriced. And the evidence is now there to prove it. Featured guests: Philipp Mueller, CEO, BlueOrchard (at time of recording), CEO of Blue Earth Capital AG (Present) Nick O'Donohoe, Former CEO, British International Investment Robert Kraybill, CIO and Managing Director, Impact Investment Exchange Jyotsna Krishnan, CEO and Co-Founder, EPIC World Listen Next: In Case You Missed It: Must-Hear Conversations Shaping Impact in 2026 (#129)" Link is https://sri360.com/podcast/conversations-shaping-impact/ Discover More from SRI360°: Explore all episodes of the SRI360° Podcast Sign up for the free weekly email update Key Takeaways: Four practitioners discuss deal-level performance data, loss rates, exits, and recovery rates - in markets most institutions walk straight past, making the case that the risk is systematically mispriced. How the world's largest microfinance fund deploys $2.4 billion through a single-intermediary model - one trusted local institution between the fund and the end borrower and why avoiding government-linked institutions is central to that discipline. How BII turned a 2% return target into a 5% actual return across seven years of African macro turmoil, and how the PSI Impact Score gave investment officers and committees a shared framework to evaluate impact rigorously. How the Women's Livelihood Bond grew from an $8.5 million first issuance to a $100 million sixth bond sold almost exclusively to pension funds, listed on the Singapore Exchange, backed by a 90/10 senior/first-loss structure and a partial Sida guarantee, and now underpinned by the Orange Bond Principles designed to open the gender lens investing market to other issuers. Why 70% of India's population remains nearly invisible to global allocators and why COVID, household resilience data, and EPIC World's distribution infrastructure make the case that the risk perception is wrong and the opportunity is larger than the capital flowing into it suggests. Here's what you're in for: 00:00 – Intro: Impact Investing's Disclosure Problem 02:20 – Philipp Mueller, Blue Orchard: The World's Largest Microfinance Fund 02:29 – What Microfinance Is — and Why It Isn't a Donation 04:24 – Ticket Sizes, Markets & How Loan Sizes Vary by Geography 07:17 – Getting Capital from Investor to Base-of-the-Pyramid Borrower 08:08 – Single-Intermediary Model: Due Diligence, Credit Rating & Impact Assessment 11:06 – One Layer Only — and Why That Preserves Accountability 11:43 – Corruption, Rule of Law & Why Blue Orchard Avoids Government-Linked Institutions 13:42 – Real-World Impact: The Leather Craftsman in Piura, Peru 16:40 – Bridge 1 16:59 – Nick O'Donohoe, BII: Patient & Flexible Capital — What Those Words Mean at a DFI 18:33 – The 2% Return Target & the False Dichotomy on Market-Rate Returns 21:06 – How a 2% Target Became a 5% Actual Return 23:00 – Portfolio Construction: Catalyst & Growth, Balancing Impact with Return 25:00 – The Catalyst Portfolio: Designed for Investments Beyond Normal Risk Tolerance 26:08 – The PSI Impact Score: A Framework Investment Officers & Committees Could Both Trust 29:18 – Bridge 2 29:32 – Robert Kraybill, IIX: Empowering Women at the Intersection of Gender & Climate 30:14 – IIX's Theory of Change: Promoting Impact Investing as a Market, Not a Product 30:56 – The Women's Livelihood Bond: Genesis, Structure & $228 Million Raised 38:31 – First Loss, Senior Bonds & the Blended Finance Structure Explained 39:37 – Listed on the Singapore Exchange: Idealistic & Practical Reasons 41:36 – Bridge 3 41:51 – Jyotsna Krishnan, EPIC World: The Entrepreneurial Household as an Economic Unit 43:45 – The Biggest Misconception: Why This Market Isn't Risky 45:22 – 70% of India's Population & What the Unseen Middle Actually Means 45:51 – Why Businesses Built for Discretionary Spends Fail the Non-Discretionary 90% 50:48 – Field Visit to Damoh: Women-Led Farmer Producer Companies & Generational Change 54:30 – Outro

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  Episode #142

  The $120 Trillion Repricing: 4 Investors on the Carbon Bubble, Stranded Assets & Real Returns

  Aug 6, 20261 hour

  Four investors. Four asset classes. One question: where does real money actually go to work on climate? In this compilation episode, I revisit conversations with four investors who put real money to work in the physical economy, across greenhouses, Indian agrifood, forests, and the fossil fuel reserves sitting on public markets. They approach climate from very different asset classes, and the contrast is the point. Dave Chen of Equilibrium Capital treats farming as infrastructure — building and operating some of the largest high-tech greenhouses in North America, and buying technology only once it hits the cost curve. Mark Kahn of Omnivore, India’s pioneering agrifood VC, argues that mitigation is sexy and adaptation is gritty, and that a country about to become too hot to farm has no choice but to fund the gritty one. Radha Kuppalli Former MD, Impact & Advocacy at New Forests explains how a forest became two assets at once — timber and carbon — and how you underwrite a biological asset you cannot harvest for thirty years. And Mark Campanale, who coined the term “unburnable carbon,” lays out the thesis that halved the reserve life of the global oil and gas sector: the market is carrying far more fossil fuel than it can ever burn. Together they map how capital is repricing land, forests, food, and fossil reserves — and where the returns are hiding in each. In this episode we discuss: Why one investor treats greenhouses like data centers — build, operate, and manage technology obsolescence “Distributed abundance”: unhooking where food is grown from climate and geography Why climate adaptation, not mitigation, is the urgent thesis for India’s smallholder economy How a forest generates two revenue streams — timber and California carbon credits — at once Underwriting a 30-year biological asset you can leave “on the shelf” to grow The “unburnable carbon” thesis, and why $120 trillion of reserves back $7–8 trillion of market cap Stranded assets: why building new fossil supply guarantees write-downs Featured guests: Dave Chen, CEO Equilibrium Capital Mark Kahn, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Omnivore Radha Kuppalli, Former Managing Director, Impact and Advocacy, at New Forests Mark Campanale, Founder & CEO, Carbon Tracker Initiative Discover More from SRI360°: Explore all episodes of the SRI360° Podcast Sign up for the free weekly email update Additional Resources Dave Chen — Equilibrium Capital Equilibrium Capital: https://eq-cap.com/ Dave Chen bio: https://eq-cap.com/about-us/dave-chen/ Dave Chen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dypchen1/ Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/dave-chen/ Mark Kahn — Omnivore Omnivore: https://www.omnivore.vc/ Mark Kahn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-kahn-20490a/ Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/mark-kahn/ Radha Kuppalli — New Forests New Forests: https://newforests.com.au/ Radha Kuppalli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radha-kuppalli/ Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/radha-kuppalli/ Mark Campanale — Carbon Tracker Initiative Carbon Tracker Initiative: https://carbontracker.org/ Mark Campanale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-campanale-1886203/ Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/mark-campanale/

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  Episode #141

  A 1% Loss Rate “Unheard Of” in Frontier Markets: How Local-Currency Lending Rewrites African Credit Risk | Clemens Calice, Cygnum Capital (#141)

  Jul 30, 20261h 26m

  Get the latest updates on Sustainable & Responsible Investing at: https://sri360.com/newsletter/ A local-currency bond fund put roughly $600 million to work across some of the credit markets the world rates as riskiest — and lost about 1% of it, over 11 years. That record belongs to Clemens Calice, who walked out of Goldman Sachs in 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis, with two colleagues and no business plan. What he built became Cygnum Capital — today a $1.5 billion platform across seven funds spanning local-currency debt, renewable energy, agriculture, and early-stage venture. Clemens makes the case that the barrier to institutional capital in Africa was never risk-return — it's deal size, compliance burden across 54 fragmented jurisdictions, and the absence of intermediary infrastructure. He explains why local-currency lending, co-investment with domestic pension funds and insurers, and patient first-mover capital are the mechanisms that actually move a market from unbankable to bankable. Today that platform runs around 150 to 160 individual investments across the continent. If you work in frontier market investing, climate finance, or blended finance structuring, this is a practitioner's case for what “honest,” evidence-led impact investing looks like on the ground — including where Clemens thinks the industry still overstates its own case. Featured Guest: Clemens Calice, CEO | Cygnum Capital Group Ltd Listen Next: Conversation with Nick O’Donohoe - Accidental Father of Impact: Nick O’Donohoe on Leading BSC, BII & Building Investability in the Emerging Markets (106) Discover More from SRI360°: Explore all episodes of the SRI360° Podcast Sign up for the free weekly email update Key Takeaways: • A platform running around 150 to 160 individual investments across the continent — a scale most institutional investors don't associate with Africa-focused funds. • A local-currency bond fund with $600M deployed over 11 years and a ~1% cumulative loss rate — in markets rated extremely weak from a credit perspective. • Why the real barrier to African institutional capital is deal size and compliance burden across 54 jurisdictions, not risk-return. • How the 20/20/60 blended-finance capital stack actually works, deal by deal. • Why Clemens rejects the term “impact investor” in favor of “responsible investor,” and what “honest impact investing” means in practice. • The Copperbelt Energy bond: from 178% oversubscribed on its first tranche to 238% on its second. • Why gas is, in his view, sometimes a necessity for grid stability — and where he draws the line. Here's what you're in for: 00:00 – Cold Open — Leaving Goldman in 2009: Starting a Firm with No Business Plan 02:56 – Lion's Head: Origins, Name & the South African Connection 06:23 – Emerging Markets as the Only Skill & the Tanzania Farm Detour 10:54 – 200 Chickens in Nairobi: Understanding the Smallholder Farmer 16:03 – Growing Up in Vienna, ETH Zurich & Into Banking by Accident 19:12 – Asian Crisis, INSEAD, New York & Goldman Sachs 22:03 – Cygnum Today: $1.5B AUM, Seven Funds & Four Continents 24:23 – Asset Management & Investment Banking: How the Two Sides Feed Each Other 25:45 – Investor Base & Crowding In Private Capital 28:09 – Rejecting "Theory of Change" for "Responsible Investor" 31:13 – The African Local Currency Bond Fund & KfW Partnership 29:07 – Why Local Currency: Eliminating Systemic Risk & a 1% Loss Rate Over 11 Years 42:58 – Blended Finance Demystified: The 20/20/60 Capital Stack 48:42 – African Risk Premiums & Why Private Capital Hasn't Arbitraged the Gap 52:36 – Cygnum as Intermediary: Removing Non-Financial Barriers to Scale 54:16 – Africa Go Green Fund: Energy Efficiency as the Underfunded Opportunity 57:24 – Clean Cooking, E-Mobility & Green Buildings: What's Scaling & What's Not 01:00:19 – Going First: Telecom Towers, CrossBoundary Energy & the Copperbelt Bond 01:05:51 – African Infrastructure Risk: Perception vs. Data Reality 01:07:52 – Honest Impact Investing & the "Responsible Investor" Label 01:11:12 – Gas, Baseload & the Case for African Economic Sovereignty 01:16:05 – The Lion's Head Split & the Rebrand to Cygnum 01:18:56 – Platform Growth: 20–25% Annually & What Has to Change 01:21:28 – Pre-Roll Clips & Rapid Fire 01:26:09 – Closing & How to Connect with Cygnum Capital Connect with SRI360°: Sign up for the free weekly email update: https://sri360.com/newsletter/ Visit the SRI360° PODCAST: https://sri360.com/podcast/ Visit the SRI360° WEBSITE: https://sri360.com/ Follow SRI360° on X: https://twitter.com/SRI360Growth/ Follow SRI360° on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/SRI360Growth/

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  Episode #139

  Too Big for Venture, Too Small for PE: Inside the ‘Missing Middle’ Where the Alpha Hides | Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Investments

  Jul 15, 20261h 27m

  Sanjeev Krishnan spent thirty years arriving at one conclusion: the clean economy's binding constraint isn't technology, it's capital structure. He watched brilliant technologies, brilliant people and brilliant visions get broken on the wheel of misaligned capital — not because the science failed, but because the financing never fit what they were trying to build. That gap is the heart of this episode of SRI360. His core belief is simple: the thing holding back the clean economy is not technology. It is capital structure. Get the financing right, and the building can follow. I’m joined by Sanjeev Krishnan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of S2G Investments, a nearly $3 billion platform across eight funds, investing at the seams of food, energy, and ocean systems. S2G has backed more than 120 companies. Sanjeev has spent his whole career on one question: how do you change an economic system using markets? Sanjeev was born in Bangalore in pre-liberalization India and moved to Grosse Pointe, Michigan, at age nine — his first time ever on a plane. He studied development economics, transferred to the London School of Economics, and joined JPMorgan just in time to watch the dot-com boom collapse from the inside. His team in Europe went from 120 people to 15. He was one of the 15 who kept their job. What came next taught him how capital really works in the physical world: building mobile networks across Africa, cutting the cost of a Hepatitis B vaccine by roughly 80–90% at the World Bank’s IFC, and five hard years inside “clean tech 1.0,” watching good companies fail for reasons that had nothing to do with their technology. In 2014, he co-founded S2G with Lukas Walton. Today Sanjeev invests at the seams — the gaps between asset classes and between sectors that most investors overlook. In this conversation we cover why capital structure is the real constraint, how he thinks about the wave of AI and energy demand, and why he is betting on the oceans, the part of the planet we have barely measured. In this episode we discuss: Why capital structure, not technology, is what really holds back the clean economy The “missing middle” — too big for venture, too small for private equity, and where good companies get stranded What “investing at the seams” of food, energy, and ocean systems actually means Fit-for-purpose capital, and why biotech figured it out but climate has not The five forces behind his “Age of Adaptation” thesis Why he reframes climate as a 10,000-year economic megatrend, not a moral crusade His bet on the oceans, and the company measuring water almost no one else can Featured guest: Sanjeev Krishnan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at S2G Investments Listen Next: AgTech Profits Meet Planet: Where Climate Impact and VC Returns Align Discover More from SRI360°: Explore all episodes of the SRI360° Podcast Sign up for the free weekly email update Key Takeaways: Capital structure is the constraint, not technology. Across thirty years, Sanjeev watched good companies with real products fail because the money backing them was shaped wrong for what they were building. The missing middle is where good companies get stranded. A business with real revenue and real profits can still be too capital-intensive for venture and too small for private equity control. Venture wants a power law. These companies just grow steadily. So nobody funds them. In May, S2G closed a billion-dollar fund built for exactly this gap. Fit-for-purpose capital means matching the money to the reality. US biotech built a system that can take an unproven, clinical-stage company public and attract hundreds of millions. Climate has never built its equivalent. That, Sanjeev argues, is the real gap. Every great transition needed a financial invention first. The joint stock company made oceanic trade possible. Bond syndicates built the railroads. The venture partnership funded the microchip. In each case someone built the financial container before the future arrived. Impact does not have to be concessionary. At the IFC, his team helped cut the cost of a Hepatitis B vaccine by roughly 80–90% — from $2.50 a vial — while margins stayed above 60–70%. Cheaper, faster, better, and profitable at the same time. Invest at the seams. The best opportunities sit between asset classes and between sectors, where a typical energy investor would dismiss it and a food investor would call it something else — so nobody underwrites it. Climate is a 10,000-year economic megatrend, not a moral crusade. Humans take useful energy and turn it into useful materials — fire, agriculture, fossil fuels. And the next chapter will still be extractive: it needs copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium. Busts are where the returns are made. You learn more in the bust cycles than the boom cycles. Markets overshoot both ways, and the companies that survive get forced into product-market fit and a real P&L. The oceans are the least measured part of the planet. We know more about space. Sanjeev co-founded Apeiron Labs in 2022 to close a data gap between 6 and 200 meters — data that matters for weather, offshore wind, insurance, and defense. Additional Resources Sanjeev Krishnan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjeev-krishnan-0b1148/ Sanjeev Krishnan at S2G: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/team/sanjeev-krishnan S2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/ S2G “Financing Reality” report: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-financing-reality Builders Vision: https://www.buildersvision.com/ Connect with SRI360°: Sign up for the free weekly email update: https://sri360.com/newsletter/ Visit the SRI360° PODCAST: https://sri360.com/podcast/ Visit the SRI360° WEBSITE: https://sri360.com/ Follow SRI360° on X: https://twitter.com/SRI360Growth/ Follow SRI360° on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/SRI360Growth/

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  Episode #138

  Good Deals Don't Make Good Markets: Impact Investing Needs Systems, Not Transactions

  Jul 9, 20261h 1m

  🌎 Get the latest updates on Sustainable & Responsible Investing at: https://sri360.com/newsletter/ What does it take to move impact investing from individual transactions to a system? And what does that mean for the field when the global development finance landscape shifts so dramatically in such a short period of time? In this episode, Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen traces a career that begins in the corridors of Washington political power and ends up in Khartoum during a military coup, and later in refugee camps on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — before running through twenty years at the Inter-American Development Bank, the UNDP's SDG Impact Standards, and the US Development Finance Corporation under the Biden administration. She breaks down what everyone gets wrong about impact investing — that it's about a transaction, a fund, a project, when it's really about building a system — and makes the case for why GSG Impact's model of locally-rooted national partners, domestic capital mobilisation, and the forthcoming Impact Economy Index represents a fundamentally different approach to the problem. If you work in impact investing, blended finance, or development policy — or if you want to understand how a $5 trillion SME finance gap in emerging markets actually gets closed — don't miss Elizabeth's practitioner case for why good deals do not automatically create good markets. Featured Guest: Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen, CEO and Executive Director, GSG Impact Listen Next: Conversation with Leslie Maasdorp: From Apartheid to the BRICS Bank to BII — Leslie Maasdorp's Journey Through Development Finance Discover More from SRI360°: Explore all episodes of the SRI360° Podcast Sign up for the free weekly email update Here’s what you’re in for: 00:00 – Intro & Trailer 01:02 – Scott's Introduction & Guest Framing 03:22 – Welcome & Introduction 03:30 – Three Generations: The Boggs Family & Early Lessons in Catalytic Capital 06:53 – Women Who Built Careers & Choosing International Development 08:01 – Georgetown, Madeleine Albright & Joining the UN 10:10 – First Posting: Khartoum, Sudan & the Power of Local 14:05 – Joining the IDB: Microfinance, OMJ & 20 Years of Lessons 21:20 – The Parachute Problem: What Development Finance Gets Wrong 23:25 – UNDP: Building the SDG Impact Standards 27:15 – The DFC: Policy Team Under Biden 28:25 – Joining GSG Impact: Field Builders for the Impact Economy 32:10 – Impact Economies vs. Impact Investments: The Core Thesis 34:15 – Priority 1: National Partnerships & the Ghana Case Study 36:20 – Priority 2: Impact Transparency & Frameworks Proliferation 41:20 – Does Impact Investing Outperform? The Growth Data 42:35 – Priority 3: $800M SME Finance Target & the Impact Economy Index 47:30 – Index Launch, Guardrails & the Race to the Top 49:15 – Geopolitical Reset: ODA Down 25%, USAID Gone, UK Aid Cut 53:05 – China: Avoided or Engaged? 55:25 – Rapid Fire 59:30 – Closing & How to Connect with GSG Impact Connect with SRI360°: Sign up for the free weekly email update: https://sri360.com/newsletter/ Visit the SRI360° PODCAST: https://sri360.com/podcast/ Visit the SRI360° WEBSITE: https://sri360.com/ Follow SRI360° on X: https://twitter.com/SRI360Growth/ Follow SRI360° on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/SRI360Growth/

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