“Climate change is here. It’s not going to happen in 10 years time, or 20 years time. We are already being impacted. ”
— Alina Truhina
In this episode, I speak with Alina Truhina, founder of Utopia Capital Management, about climate adaptation, impact investing, and how venture capital often struggles to understand and engage with regions where climate risk is already part of everyday life.
Alina grew up as a refugee, lived through profound uncertainty as a child, and later worked inside the World Bank on disaster recovery and climate resilience. Those experiences shaped how she thinks about climate finance today:
Policy matters, but she saw firsthand how institutional speed, incentives, and capital structures influence what gets built and whether solutions can actually scale.
That perspective is reflected in how Alina built Utopia Capital Management, which she describes as a platform rather than a single fund. Utopia brings together venture capital, venture building, and technical infrastructure to support founders in emerging markets who need more than capital alone.
At the core of that platform is Radical Fund, Utopia’s Southeast Asia–focused climate fund. It invests at the earliest stages and works across both climate mitigation and climate adaptation.
Radical was created after Alina saw that most climate finance in Southeast Asia focused on mitigation and that many funds were deploying capital outside the region instead of backing founders building on the ground.
Southeast Asia is one of the most climate-vulnerable parts of the world and also one of the fastest-growing contributors to global emissions. Flooding, heat stress, air pollution, food insecurity, and water scarcity are already visible.
However, most climate funding flows toward mitigation (technologies designed to reduce future emissions), while climate adaptation (investments that help people and economies live with climate impacts already happening) receives only a fraction of the attention, and even less capital.
That gap is clear in venture capital. Early-stage companies working on adaptation often fall into a missing middle. They are too commercial for grants and too complex or asset-heavy for traditional VC.
The standard fund model struggles to support them, especially in emerging markets where founders need product, technical, and go-to-market support alongside capital.
So why is that happening?
Alina explains that climate capital still avoids adaptation because mitigation is easier to measure. Carbon can be priced, modeled, and placed into spreadsheets. On the other hand, adaptation depends on avoided losses, resilience, and probability. Those outcomes matter, yet they are harder to quantify and manage.
We also talk about consumption. Alina argues that asking the poorest populations to sacrifice for climate outcomes is elitist and disconnected from how emissions and impacts are actually distributed.
Growth in Southeast Asia is driven by an expanding middle class, and consumption will continue. She sees the opportunity in investing in products, services, and business models that make consumption cleaner, more efficient, and more affordable as growth continues.
She also challenges how people think about climate companies. Some of the strongest climate outcomes come from businesses that do not label themselves as climate startups.
Logistics platforms, shipping technology, and industrial efficiency tools can reduce emissions because they address real operational inefficiencies inside complex systems. The climate impact is structural, even when it is not part of the branding.
What stayed with me after this conversation is how grounded Alina’s view of climate finance really is. Climate risk is already shaping lives across emerging markets, and capital structures will determine whether people adapt with dignity or absorb losses alone.
This conversation shows that sustainable investing is practical, operational, and deeply human. Climate adaptation becomes real when capital meets lived experience on the ground. Southeast Asia shows what climate adaptation looks like when impacts are already present, and investor decisions will shape how resilient those systems become.
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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
[02:45] Growing up across systems and adapting to uncertainty
[14:04] From institutional finance to emerging-market venture building
[26:21] Why traditional VC models fail in emerging markets
[29:05] Why founders need more than just capital
[32:55] How Radical Fund and Utopia are structured differently
[40:37] Why climate adaptation remains underfunded compared to mitigation
[45:21] Measuring adaptation and managing non-linear impact
[52:27] Non-obvious climate companies and embedded impact
[56:55] Studio models, AI, and venture de-risking
[01:09:39] Consumption, growth, and climate responsibility
[01:12:07] What investors consistently misunderstand about emerging markets
[01:15:56] Rapid fire questions
Additional Resources:
- Alina Truhina LinkedIn
- Utopia website
- The Radical Fund website
- A-Typical Ventures website
- Utopia Studio website
MORE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEWS:
“Emerging markets and early-stage founders need more than just a check. They need more than just funding. ”
— Alina Truhina
“No report, no research, no paper, no data points will give you the nuanced understanding of what you need to know to either build a company or be an investor in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, the Middle East, or Africa. Being on the ground, having your team on the ground is absolutely paramount. ”
— Alina Truhina
