East Ventures

We developed a Sustainable Investment Framework, helping East Ventures integrate ESG and impact management practices across its multi-stage portfolio

East Ventures is a pioneering and leading sector-agnostic venture capital firm that provides multi-stage investment for more than 250 early- and growth-stage tech companies in Southeast Asia. East Ventures commissioned Steward Redqueen to develop an integrated ESG and impact framework that helps portfolio companies build sustainability risk and impact management practices as they mature.

The challenge was to build a framework with procedures and targets that cater to East Ventures’ investees, matching the ESG risk and impact opportunities of early- and growth-stage tech companies in Southeast Asia. At the same time, the framework had to meet standards set by East Ventures and the requirements of their development finance investors.

Together with the East Ventures team, we kicked off the project by facilitating several working sessions.  As part of these working sessions, we performed capacity building on ESG risk and impact measurement and management, and defined their ESG policy and impact proposition. Based on this, we developed the fund manager’s bespoke Sustainable Investment Framework.

Today, the finalized framework supports the team with a strategic and systematic approach to ESG and impact management, providing relevant tools and templates to facilitate adoption. Different procedures and tools are used depending on the risk and maturity profiles of portfolio companies. After framework development, we conducted a range of training sessions for both seed and growth stage investment, legal and sustainability teams and provided ad-hoc support during the implementation. As portfolio companies scale, East Ventures is equipped to support them on this journey, continuously raising the bar on ESG risk management and impact goals, thereby helping their investees make their businesses more sustainable in the long term.