Wavemaker Impact

As part of our AGM Week this year, we travelled to Manila 🇵🇭 with some of our LPs and founders to explore the Philippines’ vibrant #startup scene and visit a few of our promising local portfolio companies. Here’s a quick recap: 📌 13 November 2024 - Manila Welcome Dinner We kicked off the trip with a panel session moderated by B. Paul Santos, Managing Partner of Wavemaker Partners, and Marie Cheong, Founding Partner of Wavemaker Impact. Jaime Urquijo (Ayala Corporation) and Ana Aboitiz Delgado (UnionBank of the Philippines) shared their insights on the future of Filipino business leadership. 📌 14 November 2024 - Portfolio Visits Our day was split into two treks to visit companies in our Wavemaker Ventures (early-stage) and Wavemaker Impact (venture-build) portfolios: 🟨 Early-stage Trek (Cavite, Philippines) ▫️ 🛒Growsari: ER Rollan (Co-founder & CEO) & his team hosted us at their Silang warehouse, showcasing their fulfillment operations and nearby sari-sari store partners. ▫️🏘️Lhoopa: Over lunch, Co-founders Marc-Olivier Caillot and Sabrina Tan and their partner brokers and contractors shared a bit about their journey, followed by a tour of a couple of affordable houses Lhoopa has built. 🟩 Impact Trek (Valenzuela) ▫️ 🔆Helios: Co-founders Alexander Aronson and Hsin Yao Cheng introduced their solar mortgage offering, alongside a customer testimonial. ▫️ 🎋Numat PH: Mark Sebastian (Founder & CEO) talked about bamboo processing and showcased samples of their sustainable bamboo slats. ▫️ 🛢️WasteX: Pawel Kuznicki (Founder & CEO) provided a live demonstration of their biochar production equipment and explained its agricultural benefits, including improving soil health and crop yields. 📌 14 November 2024 - Manila Ecosystem Night 🥂 That evening, we hosted a dinner for Philippine startup #ecosystem players, featuring a panel discussion on #innovation and #sustainability with Paul (moderator), Lance Gokongwei (Gokongwei Group), and Chris Po (Century Pacific Group). 📌 15 November 2024 - Team-Building Day We wrapped up the trip with a fun-filled day of golf⛳ , yoga 🧘🏻♀️, traditional Filipino games, and a memorable rockeoke session 🎤 with the entire Wavemaker team. 🌊 Our trip to Manila was a meaningful and eye-opening experience. We’re already looking forward to what next year’s AGM Week has in store! 🚀 #Wavemakers #WavemakerPartners #WavemakerImpact #WavemakerVentures #WavemakerGrowth

🌟 Join Us for Our Next “Female Founder Talks”! 👩💼 #WavemakerImpact is hosting the latest edition of our 𝘍𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘴 next month! This intimate discussion will spotlight 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭: 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡, featuring a panel of trailblazing female founders who will share candid insights into their own entrepreneurial journeys. Hear about the realities of starting and scaling a business, building resilience and aligning personal values with purpose-driven work from our speakers 🎙:  • Marie Cheong - Founding Partner, Wavemaker Impact • Gayatri Bhatia - Founder, Elevate Foods • Malini Kannan - Founder-In-Residence (Sustainable Fashion), Wavemaker Impact • Cherilyn Tan - CEO & Founder, Tessaract.io ❔ Who Should Attend? Female leaders with extensive experience in launching and scaling high-growth ventures, especially those interested in building climate-focused businesses. 📅 Event Details: 🗓 11th December 2024 🕘 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM 📍 1880 Singapore 🎟 Register Now! Seats are limited, and availability is on a first-come, first-served basis. If seats fill up, you’ll be added to the waitlist for our next event in 2025. ➡ Sign up: https://lnkd.in/gxanFKwJ Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, learn, and be inspired by female founders. ✨ #ClimateInnovation #FemaleFounderTalks #WomenInLeadership #FemaleEntrepreneurs #WomenInBusiness

By 2030, Southeast Asia is set to become the world's fourth-largest economy, with food consumption expected to grow 40% by 2050 🍽. But the region’s agri-food system remains fragile; fragmented smallholder farms, outdated farming practices, environmental degradation and volatility from climate change are all urgent challenges to address.   To explore pathways forward, #WavemakerImpact partnered with the Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP) – a non-profit established by Temasek Trust – with support from Philanthropy Asia Alliance, to publish “Seeding the Future: Transforming Smallholder Farms for a Sustainable Tomorrow” 📖. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/gyfMV43d Drawing from 26 interviews with solution providers, investors and corporates, the report demonstrates how Wavemaker Impact’s Carbon Maps can identify high-impact opportunities for emission reduction. It also includes over 15 case studies of how forward-thinking practitioners – 4 of which are Wavemaker Partners portcos (Rize, RegenX, Agros, FoodMap) – are effecting meaningful transformation across the region today.  Key takeaways from the report include: 💡 Solutions must be right-sized, right-priced and targeted well. 💡 Impact should be core to all investing decisions. 💡 Agriculture, food, and land use sectors need more funding. 💡 Cross-sector collaborations are crucial to break the cycle.  🌟 Are you an entrepreneur passionate about transforming Southeast Asia’s agriculture? Let’s connect! Quentin Vaquette | Ben Ong | Amanda Chen | Sneha Vasudev #CIIP #PAA #SIAW2024 #SustainableAgriculture #SmallholderFarmers #ClimateTech

🌟 Highlights from Wavemaker AGM 2024 🌟 Last week, we came together with our key partners and stakeholders for the Wavemaker Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2024. Beyond unveiling our new brand identity, here’s a recap of the highlights: 1️⃣ Fund Update: 🚀 We’ve launched 12 transformative #100x100 ventures, with 4 more set to roll out by the end of 2024—pushing the boundaries of scalable, impactful solutions in the region. 2️⃣ #FounderPitches: 🎤 Day 2 showcased our portfolio companies—Refy, Bumi Baru and HiFeed—delivering compelling pitches to our investor community. 3️⃣ #ImpactTrek in Manila: ✈ Together with our LPs, we visited Helios, WasteX and Numat PH for hands-on experiences and product demos. Highlights included: ☀ Listening to customer success stories, for Helios' solar-mortage offerings 🌿 Sampling Numat’s sustainable bamboo slats ♻ Creating fresh biochar with WasteX’s flagship machine 4️⃣ Wavemaker Ecosystem Night & Golf Tournament: 🌌⛳ We ended the busy week on a high note by hosting our friends and partners at the Annual Ecosystem Night and inaugural Wavemaker Partners Golf Tournament at Forest Hills Golf Course! We leave AGM 2024 feeling deeply energised by the ideas, updates, and connections shared. 🔋✨ It’s a powerful reminder of our mission to support bold ventures that drive a sustainable future. To our community of innovators, investors, and changemakers: Thank you for being part of this journey. Together, we’re shaping a brighter, more impactful future for 2025 and beyond! 💡🌍 Wavemaker Partners #WavemakerImpact #WavemakerGrowth #WavemakerVentures #ImpactInvesting #Sustainability #VentureCapital

🚀 Wavemaker Partners Unveils Multi-Strategy Rebrand to Back Startups from Pre-Seed to Series B+ ✨ Thrilled to announce the strategic rebranding of Wavemaker Partners as a multi-strategy fund, unveiled at our recent AGM! 🎉 This new structure enables Wavemaker Partners to provide comprehensive support to startups from co-founding to Series B and beyond, reinforcing its commitment to fostering innovation and growth in the region. 🌟 The rebrand brings three fund strategies under the Wavemaker Group umbrella: 1️⃣ Wavemaker Ventures: Early-stage investments in Enterprise, Deep Tech, and Sustainability 🌱 2️⃣ Wavemaker Impact: A venture-build fund driving #100x100 Climate-tech investments for a greener future 🌏 3️⃣ Wavemaker Growth: Our newly launched growth fund to scale startups from Series B onwards, led by the veteran team of B. Paul Santos, Shiv Choudhury and Xue K. 📈 We’re also pleased to share that the inaugural Wavemaker Growth Opportunities Fund (“Wavemaker Growth”) has achieved its first close of US$30 million 💰, with support from limited partners (LPs) like QLA Investment and Cercano Management. 🤝 With this rebranding and restructuring, we’re more ready than ever to partner with and support founders solving big problems in this region.✨ If you’re building something impactful, we’d love to hear from you! 💡 Read more 🔗 : https://lnkd.in/g-abK_eQ #WavemakerPartners #WavemakerImpact #WavemakerGrowth #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #ClimateTech #VentureCapital #Startups #GrowthFunding #Sustainability #DeepTech

✨ From Tasting the Air to Transforming It: Ed’s Journey to Sustainable Fintech ✨ Meet Ed Chin, founder and CEO of Refy - a #WavemakerImpact portco focused on AI-powered green asset fintech financing in Southeast Asia! 🌱 Ed’s passion for sustainability stems from growing up in Hong Kong at a time when environmental consciousness was virtually nonexistent. “We used to joke that you could taste the air before you could see it,” Ed recalled. This early experience showed him how environmental degradation can impact communities and instilled in him a belief that everyone has a role in driving change. Ed’s journey into climate-tech was serendipitous. Exploring new challenges after his fintech exit, he realised that his skills in structured finance and AI from the consumer credit space could be pivotal for unlocking capital for renewable energy infrastructure, critical to APAC’s renewable energy transition. 📚💡🏦 During this time he connected with the Wavemaker Impact team, and was struck by how they too saw the clean energy transition as an opportunity to reimagine the funding and building of green infrastructure. #WMi’s commitment to backing transformative solutions in APAC and understanding of the region's financing challenges made them the ideal partner to co-build Ed’s startup #Refy, an AI-powered green asset fintech financier in Southeast Asia. 🌿🛠 This journey is not just a professional mission for Ed; it’s personal. “I chose climate-tech to show my kids we can create solutions that make clean energy accessible and affordable, proving that individual action can drive systemic change,” he shares. 🌍❤ With Refy and the backing of Wavemaker Impact, Ed is dedicated to creating a legacy of clean air and a healthier future. ☀ Want to learn more about Ed's climate-tech journey and what he's doing with Refy? Connect with him for a coffee today! ☕  #100x100 #Sustainability #Fintech #ClimateTech #CleanEnergy #RenewableEnergy #ImpactInvesting #GreenFinance #APAC

✨🌱 Excited to announce the launch of #WMi’s inaugural whitepaper: “Portfolio Acceleration: Getting Companies Seed-Round Ready”! 🌱 ✨ Portfolio Acceleration refers to how VC funds support their portfolio companies in accelerating growth to maximise impact and returns as efficiently as possible. While there’s extensive literature on later-stage growth, early-stage guidance is scarce. 🔍 At Wavemaker Partners, we recognise the importance of every growth inflection point, especially when backing founders tackling real-world challenges like climate change. 🌱🌍 With start-up failure rates reaching 70-80% at the pre-Series A stage, we wanted to explore a critical question in underexplored territory: Can we systematically help early-stage companies reach a proven market opportunity more quickly? Over six months, we studied Portfolio Acceleration with input from 50+ industry practitioners in #SoutheastAsia’s VC ecosystem. The resulting whitepaper highlights new insights, mainly the “3Ps of Portfolio Acceleration”: 1️⃣ Product-Market Fit (PMF): The first catalyst for growth. 2️⃣ People: Founder is Key: Founders are central to finding PMF. 3️⃣ Providing Strategic Clarity: Founders most need guidance navigating ambiguity. We hope our whitepaper sparks valuable conversations and supports our VC community in helping talented entrepreneurs solve meaningful problems at speed and scale. 🏃♂️💡 A big thank you to all who contributed to our study, including our portfolio companies, network partners, industry peers and Limited Partners. 🙏 Download the whitepaper here: https://lnkd.in/gFp_KCaE. We’d love to hear your feedback! 💬📥 Marie Cheong | Ben Ong | Cassandra Yip-Lee | Amanda Chen | Nick Kastenholz | Anton Alonte #PortfolioAcceleration #Startups #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #ClimateChange #GrowthStage #SeedFunding

🌍 Introducing Numat: Transforming Bamboo Processing to Uplift Communities and Combat Climate Change 🌱 Excited to share that #WavemakerImpact has co-built and invested into Numat PH, a #ClimateTech startup revolutionising bamboo processing across the #Philippines and beyond! 🇵🇭 #Bamboo absorbs 4.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne harvested, making it a powerful ally against climate change. 🌿 #Numat, co-founded by #WMi founder-in-residence Mark Sebastian, transforms raw bamboo into sustainable products, starting with primary processing. By processing bamboo at source – through robust processing infrastructure, innovation, and dependable supply chains – Numat can bring sustainable income to rural communities while reducing environmental impact. 🌱💼 Numat’s key innovation is the world’s first mobile bamboo processing unit. 🚛 This allows Numat to set up operations directly at farmers’ harvest sites, increasing efficiency and reducing transportation costs. Additionally, Numat’s newly launched BambooPreneur Programme empowers landowners to start their own bamboo processing businesses, in a franchise-style model. 🌳 Find out more in the article below! “We’re excited to support Numat on its journey in building bamboo processing capabilities that not only improves local communities’ welfare but also delivers positive environmental impact through #CarbonSequestration,” says Marie Cheong, Founder Partner, Wavemaker Impact. “We believe that bamboo material from the Philippines can be cost-competitive with exports from around the world.” 🌎 🎉 Congratulations Mark and the Numat PH team! We look forward to hitting $100m in annual revenue and abating 100 million tonnes of CO2 together! #100x100 💰🌱 To further their mission, Numat is open to collaborating with other businesses and organisations that share their vision – if that’s you, get in touch with Mark for a coffee chat! ☕🤝 #Sustainability #ClimateAction #ImpactInvesting #GreenTech Sumira Jayabalan Nick Kastenholz Anton Alonte

🌏Wavemaker Impact at the Jakarta Tech in Asia Conference 2024 📈 Our Venture Builder & Country Head of #Indonesia, Tauhid Pandji, recently represented #WavemakerImpact at the Tech in Asia Conference 2024 in Jakarta. Joining an esteemed panel alongside Raditya Wibowo, Founder of MAKA Motors and Jack Yang, CEO of Electrum, and moderated by Tanah Sullivan, Head of Sustainability at GoTo Group, the discussion centered around the theme: "Can Indonesia Become Southeast Asia's EV King?" Here are the key insights Tauhid shared during the panel: 🔹 Closing the Innovation Gap: While the #ElectricVehicle space in SEA may seem saturated with existing solutions, there are still significant innovation gaps to fill. Aspiring founders in the EV sector should focus on addressing large, underserved customer pain points across the EV value chain. Opportunities abound from upstream to downstream—like sustainable mining, factory automation, and EV financing—that can drive down production costs, enhance economies of scale and accelerate overall EV adoption. 🔹 Surviving the “Valley of Death”: Early-stage climate tech companies, especially in the EV sector, face high hurdles in reaching product-market fit. At Wavemaker Impact, we engage deeply with 50-100 customer stakeholders in our venture-building process to understand critical pain points and design solutions that meet real needs. For climate tech startups, gaining traction in a focused segment before expanding is crucial for survival and long-term growth. 🔹 Indonesia’s Strategic Role in SEA’s EV Landscape: With abundant nickel resources and a substantial domestic market, Indonesia has a unique opportunity to play a leading role in SEA’s EV ecosystem. Wavemaker Impact sees EVs as a key component of a #100x100 climate tech opportunity across our five pillars in SEA (land use, mobility/transport, agriculture & food, built environment, industrial). Indonesia’s path to leadership lies in building innovative climate tech companies that address real customer needs while deploying green technologies. We’re grateful to Tech in Asia for the platform to share our vision, as we explore new frontiers in climate tech and unlock Indonesia’s potential as a leader in the space. #WMi #TechinAsia2024 #ClimateTech #GreenEconomy #FutureofMobility

Happy Deepavali from the #WavemakerImpact family! 🪔 May this festive season bring you abundance, joy, and new possibilities. As we celebrate the triumph of light over darkness, let’s stay committed to building a brighter, more sustainable world together. Wishing you and your loved ones a wonderful Deepavali! ✨🌿 #Deepavali2024 #Diwali2024 #HappyDeepavali