Forbes India 2022 W-Power: Anjali Bansal of Avaana Capital is investing for a sustainable and inclusive world. | Daily News Byte

Anjali Bansal, Founding Partner, Avaana Capital Image: Selvaprakash Lakshmanan for Forbes India

anjali Bansal has been asking young people for years: ‘What are you most excited about? And what are you most worried about?’ For the first time, they talk about things. For the second time, until about two or three years ago, “They said, maybe, worried about work and so on. After that, it started to change, I worried about the environment. That for me was ‘aha!’ Private. Right now,” said founding partner of climate technology venture capital (VC) fund Avaana Capital.

There were a few more moments like that, one of which was a side effect of Covid – “The sky was blue and I saw color in the sea off the coast of Mumbai, which in 20 years of living here I have never had. saw So it just shows that there is a better world to live in.” And another is that her son chose the college based on the fact that it offers weather courses.

Although Avaana Capital, founded in 2018, is always focused on sustainability and inclusion, over the past few years, the team has sharpened more to work on climate solutions. “Seventy percent of our portfolio is in sustainability. Now we have chosen to define it,” Bansal said, adding that for Avaana, climate means three things. “These three areas account for 90 percent of emissions in India. Energy transition, which includes everything from access to energy to renewables, land and resources for soil, air, waste water. The second is mobility and supply chain. And the third is sustainable agriculture. So mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.”

The difference with climate technology investments is that there is a strong, innovative technology component, points out Ramraj Pai, Chief Executive Officer, Impact Investors Council, a national industry organization to strengthen impact investing in India. He added that in the last few years, there has been a growing interest in the VC space, and there are a few funds that are investing very creatively in new technologies.

Avaana has so far invested in about 20 startups, including Eeki Foods and Terra.do in 2022. The fund invests in early-stage, pre-Series A companies that not only solve big problems, but are also on a clear path. to trade and profit. “Big problems, big markets, great founders, where technology or innovation is the moat and capital is just the builder,” said Bansal, an engineer who studied policy and business and finance at Columbia University, and then joined McKinsey as a strategist. Consultant. Later, she became a global partner and MD with TPG Private Equity, but throughout her journey she always had, as she put it, two ways, “one is your daily work and the other is what you can do, and. to contribute to that.”

While the latter included chairing the World Bank Board of Indian Women, she was also desired by the government to become the first external chairperson of Dena Bank, to guide the bank’s strict resolutions. Most recently, she worked with the Advisory Council for the Open Network for Digital Commerce, the world’s first open infrastructure for digital commerce. Along the way, she served on a number of corporate boards, though now, she says, she “serves on a board that is completely mission-aligned with Avaana.” Case in point, Tata Power, Nestlé and Piramal Enterprises.

Bansal’s network everywhere, from policy to academia, translates into a team with deep expertise and experience in the fields they operate in. “So understanding that something is commercially scalable is two phone calls away,” said Riddhi Vora, who works with the investment team at Avaana.

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Bansal has found female partners in Shruti Srivastava, who manages investments at Avaana, and Swapna Gupta, a partner in Avaana’s climate and sustainability fund. But, Bansal says, if there’s one thing that male founders do differently, “it’s that they find two of their classmates, batchmates, whatever, and have a team of three founders, [while] Women often start alone, partly because they don’t have a network.” The drain means that women often leave the work environment. So her advice to female entrepreneurs? “Find your co-founder, start a team and build. Dream big and find your tribe fast.”