Fundraising is a Beast, Govt Has to Encourage Funds to Be Enablers: Seema Chaturvedi According to Chaturvedi, AWE Funds invests in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, which means investing in climate tech, health tech, the future of work, skilling, and fintech, which ultimately translates to financial inclusion.

"We don't limit ourselves to only women entrepreneurs. We are more nuanced in our theory of change," said Seema Chaturvedi, Founder and Managing Partner at AWE Funds.

According to Chaturvedi, AWE Funds invests in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, which means investing in climate tech, health tech, the future of work, skilling, and fintech, which ultimately translates to financial inclusion.

"I guess our secret sauce is focusing on mechanisms that drive gender equity, because that then drives better commercial returns. And the outcome is our lever for encouraging the portfolio companies to deliver that incremental investment," said Chaturvedi.

Chaturvedi said that AWE works on a bespoke level, with no intentions of fully running a portfolio company, but is helpful for the founders. AWE chooses the founding team based on its understanding of their ability to scale.

"We do request the companies to send us MISs definitely every month. We have calls with them on a very regular basis, saying, How can we help? And the whole idea is to say, it's not us versus them. It's all of us together to scale the company because we are all on the same side.We have all the same aspirations of making the company valuable,"

Chaturvedi also said that the fund has helped its portfolio companies access key marquee clients, especially in the US, India, because India is building for the world now. "And it's great that we can have the scale of innovation, which doesn't just have to depend on the Indian market, but a global consumer market."

Chaturvedi explained that it's been a journey as a firm, navigating the ever-changing business landscape. The question is, how does a firm get its message across in a manner that's accretive and that adds value, and in a way where nobody just dumps plain ideology?

"First of all, there's a selection bias in-built because the people who come to us have a general appetite and appreciation for the goals that we're trying to accomplish. So there's some alignment there through the selection bias. So the people who come to us are already in some manner pre-selected automatically, just given our sector focus, and the reputation that we have built. So there's that general openness for the portfolio company level. And again, people listen," explained Chaturvedi.

Seema refers to the list of changes or reforms she wants to see as a "laundry list," and said that regulators have to cut some slack for newer funds, because "Fundraising is a beast. It's not easy."

According to Chaturvedi, having a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation is sometimes very harmful. SEBI's guidelines on closing the funds within the stipulated time have caused a " double whammy" to the smaller and newer impact-focused funds, because it's bad enough that the world thinks that their returns are going to be compromised because people are chasing impact.

"We try to tell them that's not the case. We are unlocking higher returns because of the impact we're creating."

"The government of India should have a program that backs first and second-time fund managers. And when they're doing that, these programs should be coming out with enabling provisions. Encourage the funds to be enablers," said Chaturvedi.