Top Stories of Roopa Kudva, Omidyar Network India: Filling in two cheque books
Roopa Kudva nearly celebrated a silver jubilee at CRISIL before she assumed her role as the leader of an impact investment firm, Omidyar Network India. These are companies that have created businesses based on innovation; businesses that seek to create social impact and grow the industries they operate in, namely consumer Internet and mobile, financial inclusion, and education.
Evidently, India is emerging as a big hub for impact investing and social innovation with a lot of foreign money going into domestic ventures, especially those with a double bottom line. “It is India’s time now,” believes Roopa Kudva, partner at Omidyar Network and managing director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, an impact investment organization that aims to advance social good at the pace and scale the world needs today.
The drivers of social impact investment include an increase in smartphone penetration in India, the use of local languages on the Internet, opportunities based on Aadhaar cards, skills policies, and experimentation in property rights. In this story, Roopa Kudva takes us through her personal growth at Omidyar, the company’s investment theses, its approach to spotting portfolio companies, and its future plans.
“We support entrepreneurs who have innovative ideas and are looking to leverage technology in new ways and achieve massive social impact at scale. Roopa’s responsibilities for Omidyar India include managing its strategy, operations, and development of its portfolio companies. A non-profit organization receives a grant and a for-profit company receives equity investment from Omidyar.
India is also one of the few geographies in which the company has a fully built-up portfolio; it has spanned all five sectors (consumer Internet and mobile, education, financial inclusion, governance, and citizen engagement, and property rights) with investments in both profit and non-profit ventures. Omidyar invests at three distinct levels; affecting change in policy in the sector, creating sector infrastructure, and supporting innovation from individual entrepreneurs.
At the level of policy, Omidyar has invested in The Education Alliance, a company that works with the government, to get government schools to collaborate with private operators. The organization understands that if it is investing in truly innovative ideas with a goal of impacting change within a sector, then patience is the next best thing it can give its entrepreneurs, apart from capital.
“This long engagement with entrepreneurs enables us to support them in many other ways be it human capital, recruitment, leadership development, learning new techniques in product management, and more,” states Roopa. Roopa narrates the example of a global company called Lenddo that uses social media data to enable the new middle class in emerging markets to access affordable financial services.
Talking specifically about the for-profit portfolio companies, Roopa states the importance of never losing sight of the bottom line, “Just because an enterprise has a social impact, it does not mean it should give lower returns.” Of course, certain sectors yield higher returns and some, a lot lower and this is independent of the social mandate.
Considering the very nature of patient capital, the impact of Omidyar’s investment in India can be gauged from the changes seen at the sectoral level. Roopa cites an example, “In education, we gauge our impact based on the improvement in the learning outcome for children.” In financial services, increasing access to more innovative products and services at lower costs is a good measure of impact.
“As people understand the concept of impact investing, we hope that in five to 10 years' time, the pool of capital impact investment in India will get significantly higher,” concludes Roopa Kudva, on an optimistic note.
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