“At ABC Impact, our DNA is rooted in delivering risk-adjusted returns with measurable, evidence-backed impact. ”
— Sugandhi Matta
My guest today is Sugandhi Matta, Chief Impact Officer at ABC Impact – the largest Pan-Asian impact-dedicated private equity fund, with nearly $900 million in assets under management.
Sugandhi grew up in multi-city India, in a family where equality was expected and debate was encouraged. She never forgot the significance of being treated no differently from her older brother – something she now recognizes as unusual for middle-class India in the ’80s and ’90s.
Sugandhi didn’t set out to build a career in impact. She started in computer science at MSU, shifted to business after the 2000 tech crash, and joined Temasek in Singapore straight out of IIM Bangalore.
At 24, her goals were simple and pragmatic – pay off her mortgage and get a better house. Impact wasn’t even part of the vocabulary. She was focused on growth, risk, and return – and she thrived in that world.
But over time, the landscape – and her lens – began to shift. A move to Actis during the 2008 financial crisis gave her deeper exposure to emerging markets and mid-market private equity.
And then, in her early thirties, Sugandhi was diagnosed with breast cancer. It forced a pause – and not just from work. The experience brought her back to fundamentals: what she enjoyed, what she was good at, and where she wanted to invest her time.
When she returned to work, she began asking how her investing skills could be applied to businesses solving real, tangible problems.
That search led her to LeapFrog Investments, a billion-dollar impact fund focused on financial inclusion across India and Southeast Asia. There, she saw firsthand how impact and commercial performance could be tracked together – but always through the lens of viable, scalable business models.
A few years later, in 2019, Temasek Trust called. They were building a Pan-Asian impact fund that could integrate commercial returns with evidence-backed impact. Sugandhi joined as one of the founding members.
ABC Impact was built from the ground up: strategy, team, themes, measurement systems – all designed from scratch.
Today, ABC Impact invests across four themes:
Climate and water solutions
Financial and digital inclusion
Better health and education
Sustainable food and agriculture
They provide growth equity to companies with strong fundamentals and mission-aligned business models – always as a minority investor, with checks ranging from $30 to $70 million.
Sugandhi leads the firm’s impact team. They developed a proprietary system rooted in the five dimensions of the Impact Management Project and tailored to ABC’s sectors. Every investment is screened at the term sheet stage, scored using customized rubrics, and tracked throughout the holding period. At ABC, impact isn’t post-hoc. It’s underwritten.
The internal language centers on three Cs: consistency, comparability, and communicability. It’s a disciplined approach – built to align intention, data, and outcomes across the portfolio.
And it’s working. ABC has backed companies like Dami and Xiaomi, a Chinese autism therapy chain; Cropin, an Indian agritech data platform; and Sunseap, a Southeast Asian solar energy company acquired by EDPR. In each case, impact scaled with the business.
What sets ABC apart isn’t just its regional focus or thematic clarity – it’s how fully integrated the impact work is. Sugandhi has little patience for fuzzy metrics or feel-good anecdotes. Her goal is to hold impact to the same standard as IRR.
However, she points out that the burden of proof is often uneven. Expected returns are taken at face value. Impact is asked to justify itself at every turn. It’s not that investors don’t believe in impact – it’s that they don’t yet trust its metrics the way they trust financial ones.
The double standard isn’t just about data. It’s about gender, too.
As one of the few female investment leads in Asia’s private equity ecosystem, Sugandhi has had to thread her way through what she calls the “quiet skepticism” – the unspoken assumptions around risk appetite, ambition, or expertise.
Even now, she’s often the only woman in the room with GPs or LPs. She doesn’t lead with gender, but she’s aware of how it plays out. The skepticism is often unspoken, but present. Over time, she’s learned not to internalize it. Instead, she focuses on the work, knowing that – fairly or not – being a woman in this space can mean having to prove yourself just a little more.
Sugandhi doesn’t idealize impact. She builds for it – with the same rigor she once applied to pure commercial metrics. Models. Rubrics. Systems. Her team underwrites impact from day one, embeds it into the investment memo, tracks it across holding periods, and reports on it with the same seriousness as IRR.
She’s not making a case. She’s making a casework. And in the process, she’s helping build a portfolio – disciplined, regional, thematic – that just happens to be solving some of Asia’s most urgent challenges.
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.
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
- Connect with Sugandhi: LinkedIn
- ABC Impact on LinkedIn
- ABC Impact website
- ABC’s 2020 Impact Report
- ABC’s 2024 Impact Report
- Insights from Dalberg and ABC Impact’s User-Centered Study
Previous SRI360 interviews mentioned:
- Stewart Langdon (Ep. 17)
- Eliza Foo (Ep. 71)
- Sharon Vosmek (Ep. 07)
- Tara Bishop (Ep. 70)
- 4 Women-Led Funds: 4-in-1 (Ep. 86)
- Sir Ronald Cohen (Ep. 73)
SHOW NOTES:
[00:00] Introduction
[03:49] Sugandhi Matta’s background and early influences
[08:07] Educational journey
[12:09] Joining Temasek and stepping into institutional finance
[15:46] Joining Actis amid the 2008 financial crisis
[18:48] Cancer and the turning point toward impact
[22:34] Entry into impact investing at LeapFrog Investments
[27:05] Leaving LeapFrog to build ABC Impact from scratch
[32:50] Evolving role as Chief Impact Officer
[37:50] No trade-offs philosophy
[44:07] ABC’s approach to structured impact measurement
[54:19] Case studies: Measuring impact in autism therapy
[56:01] Cropin (India) – agricultural technology platform
[58:04] Sunseap (Southeast Asia) – rooftop renewable energy business
[58:39] Financial inclusion investments in China and India
[01:00:34] Fundraising evolution and LP conversations
[01:04:57] Sector resilience and founder intentionality
[01:09:29] Supporting the tribe of female founders
[01:13:48] Structural barriers women face in accessing capital
[01:17:09] Industry standardization and future outlook
[01:21:07] Asia’s at the heart of the global impact story
[01:23:59] Exit strategies in impact investing
[01:26:19] Rapid-fire questions
MORE SUGANDHI MATTA QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW:
“Private equity is capitalism at its sharpest. You’re not providing concessional capital, you’re not doing grant-based work. But it doesn’t mean that it can’t serve a purpose. ”
— Sugandhi Matta
“From a sector perspective, ABC Impact has four impact themes – two that fall under what’s traditionally considered social impact, and two that align with environmental or climate impact. ”
— Sugandhi Matta
