Social innovation, S.I is about finding creative, sustainable and cost-effective solutions to today’s problems. It must be able to have far reaching impact to the masses and be affordable. We aim to focus on 3 critical areas of society that are vital to people – environment, healthcare and education.
A new business model that combines social innovation with investment management that is 100% dedicated to Sustainability and ESG problems around the world. A new niche area where Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropy can harness the power of technology to improves the lives of millions and complement traditional grant-making. A new long-term investment for institutional investors to lock-in on new breakthrough technology companies that could significantly reduce carbon emissions/improve climate change, enhance medical care/treatment and make education more accessible to less privilege around the world and yet finally able to turn a profit when the startup becomes an enterprise.
Our objective is driven by dual mandates of positive social change (problem solver) and investment returns (commercial viability). Neither can exist on its own to be sustainable. For example, a medical device that is an innovation but highly priced may be out of reach to the masses and over time, this product will die a natural death as a more innovative idea or product will supersede it by making it cheaper and better. Electric cars is another example, no matter how great the innovation is that helps radically reduce carbon emissions, if the price is 50% higher than a normal petrol or gas engine car, the acceptance by the general public will be low and the impact to environment very little.
Thus, we want to source and invest in innovative products or services that are ‘radically different and significantly better’ than the competition and can evolve over time to much improved versions and gain scale in large markets. The sustainability of the technology and its ability to ‘learn and improve’ over time to stay profitable and be a long-term solution i.e most resilient trends can last at least 1 market cycle of 10 years. This is of critical importance as solutions that are not truly innovative or have ‘creative destruction’ elements (as defined by Joseph Schumpeter, widely regarded as ‘champion of innovation & entrepreneurship’) would most probably be short-lived or be an ineffective product that do not have enough buyers to be profitable in the long run.
This will directly impact our investors and their return on capital, for which there would be no future social innovation and positive social returns. As they play a vital role to back new innovators to turn dreams into reality and provide sustainable solutions to society and climate change should be highly lauded and not taken for granted. Thus, our VC investment process is highly selective and manage risks in a dynamic manner and do not adopt the conventional model of ‘law of averages’ where a few investments become hits while 90% of the portfolio are misses. To be truly effective in helping new entrepreneurs make their innovations viable in the marketplace, our efforts has to be dedicated and not dispersed, on the few most promising ones. Time and energy cannot be spread out too thinly in a highly intellectual business.
Disruptive change can only occur with bold and creative ideas by a team of innovators who dare to challenge the status quo or constantly question themselves on how to do better. Our passionate team of people are motivated by helping such innovators make new paradigm shifts and not incremental improvements in problem solving. Therefore, our focus and investment process are enhanced by an international team of Scientific Advisers (ad hoc) from different fields (Phds and medical doctors). This allows us to zoom in on what makes sense and reduce the risks of investments as we know that early-stage startup innovations are highly risky.
Carefully selected team of passionate people who forgo the rat race and put aside self-interest for the greater good. Kindly supported by a team of Scientific Advisers whose interest in science & technology goes beyond creating new patents and research papers, but comes from the goodness of their hearts to do good for humanity. This makes us much more prudent and selective in our choices of investing in new early stage start-ups that potentially could be unable to launch. Having said that, our courage and intuition to stick to those ingenious & creative ideas with resilient founding team members must allow more time for these new innovators in environment, healthcare and education to grow.
Some of the top social, environmental and health problems in the world are air pollution that may have caused around 2.2 million deaths in China and India in 2015 (source: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/14/around-22-million-deaths-in-india-and-china-from-air-pollution-study.html), climate change where extreme weather could usher human health effects (besides endangering our planet), cancer and other serious illnesses that causes death and disability, and poor children lacking basic education still numbers in millions globally.
Our approach is taking a holistic view that climate change impact and healthcare globally are inextricably linked. A 2016 research from WHO, World Health Organisation indicated climate change adversely affect health in terms of clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and shelter in addition to infectious diseases due to air and water pollution like asthma, malaria, dengue, cardiovascular diseases (ultra fine particles PM 2.5s in the air that penetrate the lungs) and water borne diseases from insects just to name a few. Ambient or household air pollution causes about 3 mil and 4.3 mil deaths per year respectively globally (source: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/).
Ultimately, by creating cost-effective but yet viable solutions that can reach critical mass of people and across countries though challenging would help solve society’s problems and create a virtuous cycle in society. We welcome you to join us, as a change-agent, as a corporate leader, as a pension/endowment/angel investor, as a foundation philanthropist, or as a scientist or doctor with brilliant ideas in our voyage of social innovation!
As Einstein once said: ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ and
Thomas Edison: ‘genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration’.
We welcome any enquiries, do send us a note: enquiry@mwasi.tech
