Business
Today’s guest is Christopher Aw – Managing Partner of Pandan VC, an early stage VC fund acting as a launchpad for technology companies entering into Southeast Asia. We began our conversation by defining what ESG is; how it is used by companies as a guideline to mitigate potentials risks; And then moving onto trends and ideas around active ESG strategy; the difficulty and reality of practising such an active strategy. And also adding the perspective of early stage ventures in our discussion. Key Take-aways ESG is predominantly used as a way to mitigate risks in the public sector and by large corporations There is an increasing trend towards active ESG strategies with numerous technologies maturing and creating more investible options; however, certain aspects of ESG such as social (e.g. gender equality) remain challenging when it comes to active investment strategy Plant-based proteins and other alternative proteins (some produced from insects) contribute positively to the environment as they use far less carbon to produce a certain amount of protein as compared to meat The clean meats sector is probably the one receiving the most public attention due to the hugely successful IPO of Beyond Meat which saw its price rose 789% at one point Other investible ESG concepts and themes mentioned: carbon capture technology, biomass waste-to-energy, aquaculture, alternative proteins made from insects, microfinance loans, indoor and precision farming, Gene-editing tools CRISPR and TALEN Episode links Carbon capture technology explained: http://www.ccsassociation.org/what-is-ccs/ Biomass explained: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/biomass/waste-to-energy.php Beyond Meat post-IPO price surge: https://www.businessinsider.sg/beyond-meat-stock-price-breaks-200-per-share-2019-7/?r=US&IR=T Impossible Foods launching plant-based pork at tech conference CES (Jan 2020) https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/06/business/impossible-foods-pork-ces/index.html Gene-editing tools CRISPR and TALEN: https://ark-invest.com/research/crispr-vs-talens Pandan VC: https://www.pandan.vc/