“What we call entrepreneurial households are going to drive dramatic growth and contribute significantly to economies around the world, particularly in emerging markets, over the next 20 years. ”
— Sandeep Farias
Emerging markets are evolving fast – and the strategies needed to invest in them are evolving just as quickly.
In this second compilation focused on emerging markets, we revisit conversations featuring three investors who are channeling substantial capital into regions where others hesitate to go – and they’re doing it with discipline, innovation, and deep local insight.
Each of these guests brings a different strategy and perspective, but all are working toward the same goal: building sustainable, scalable businesses that meet the needs of underserved communities.
Their long-term investment strategies are bridging persistent gaps in healthcare, finance, education, and climate resilience. And they’re doing it in ways that challenge the old assumptions: that impact comes at the expense of return, that emerging markets are too volatile to be investable, or that scalable solutions must come from the West.
Here are the featured voices:
Sandeep Farias, Founder and Managing Partner, Elevar Equity
Elevar backs what they call entrepreneurial households – more than 50 million families across emerging markets who’ve moved beyond the bottom of the pyramid. While they’re making economic progress, they still lack access to the products and services that support their ambitions and daily lives.
Sandeep and his team take a bottom-up, equity-focused approach to identify the “core solutions” these families prioritize – like education, healthcare, and agriculture – and invest in entrepreneurs building businesses to serve them.
With five funds deployed across India and Latin America, Elevar stays close to both customers and founders, spending time in the field to understand how people live, what they value, and where capital can make the greatest difference.
Elevar shows that scalable businesses can emerge from the ground up – rooted in the real needs and spending behavior of the households themselves – and deliver strong returns without compromising impact.
Full episode here.
Rochus Mommartz, CEO, ResponsAbility
Rochus leads responsAbility – one of the world’s largest dedicated impact asset managers, with $5 billion under management and more than $15 billion deployed across emerging markets since inception.
His team doesn’t start with products. They start with problems – like the 500 million people in Africa who still lack electricity, or the small businesses across Asia and Latin America that can’t get financing. Then they find the companies solving those problems and shape capital to support their growth.
Rochus draws a clear line between real and perceived risk. Emerging markets aren’t short on opportunity – they’re just often misunderstood by investors who rely too much on spreadsheets and not enough on what’s actually happening on the ground.
For responsAbility, the key is proximity. That means staying close to the portfolio companies, building local partnerships, and adapting capital to the realities of the market – not the other way around.
Full episodes as follows:
Part 1
Part 2
Sugandhi Matta, Chief Impact Officer, ABC Impact
Sugandhi helped launch ABC Impact with backing from Temasek and Temasek Trust – and helped shape it into the largest Pan-Asian private equity fund dedicated to impact.
From the start, her focus has been on building a strategy rooted in Asia’s realities – not imported from somewhere else. That meant starting with evidence: mapping the region’s most urgent needs, identifying where scalable solutions could take hold, and designing an impact framework from the ground up.
ABC now manages close to $1 billion across sectors like healthcare, financial inclusion, sustainable food, and climate resilience. They back mission-driven founders solving problems they’ve lived – and who have the resilience and discipline to scale.
Sugandhi leads the firm’s impact team, embedding evidence-backed decision-making into every stage of the investment process. They don’t just track outcomes – they conduct primary research, pressure-test assumptions, and ensure each investment aligns with both commercial and impact goals.
That mix of purpose and performance is exactly why she sees Asia not just as part of the impact story, but the center of it.
Full episode here.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SHOW NOTES:
[00:00] Introduction
[04:29] Microfinance landscape in India during career shift
[05:39] Inspiration and founding of Elevar Equity
[08:05] Elevar’s mission, strategy, and fund overview
[16:20] Shift from microfinance to entrepreneurial households
[20:33] Elevar’s theory of change and impact focus
[25:51] Elevar method and disciplined company-building approach
[35:05] Field immersion drives customer-centric investment decisions
[36:16] Rochus’ definition of impact investing
[41:39] Origin and meaning of the company name responsAbility
[43:00] ResponsAbility’s theory of change
[46:11] Company overview: mission, investment focus, and asset classes
[49:02] Portfolio composition: private debt vs private equity
[52:32] Geographic footprint and local presence in emerging markets
[56:39] ResponsAbility’s impact assessment
[01:16:09] Relationship between impact results and financial returns
[01:22:34] Launching ABC Impact with Temasek backing
[01:25:50] Critical early decisions in building ABC Impact
[01:30:32] ABC Impact’s mission, investment themes, and geographic focus
[01:32:58] Balancing financial returns and impact without trade-offs
[01:39:15] The interconnectedness of social and climate impact
[01:50:38] Characteristics of mission-driven entrepreneurs and resilience
MORE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEWS:
“In emerging markets, the core impact basically happens when you create access – access to finance, access to clean energy, access to healthcare. ”
— Rochus Mommartz
“Asia is at the heart of the global impact story. ”
— Sugandhi Matta
