5-Minute Interview with Jennifer Buckley, Sweef Capital
Dr. Dorothy Kelso
Managing Director, SuperReturn | Board Chair | Emerging Manager Champion
In this series of 5-minute interviews, I shine the spotlight on up-and-coming fund managers in private markets across the globe. All geographies. All strategies. All sectors.
Here's my conversation with Jennifer Buckley, Founder and Managing Director at Sweef Capital.
Quick facts about Sweef Capital:
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Q: What’s Sweef Capital’s investment strategy?
A: We target EBITDA positive businesses demonstrating a clear commitment to diversity in their operations and value chains and in markets and sectors experiencing strong and growing demand.
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Q: What are the market drivers in this area?
A: There are exciting investment opportunities in healthcare, education, sustainable food systems and consumer goods and climate resilience, where we see women entrepreneurs providing the solutions and women in the workforce delivering solutions. Yet while there are high levels of women’s ?entrepreneurship in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, studies show access to capital remains low. IFC data indicates that USD$900 billion to $1.1 trillion of SMEs’ capital requirements are unmet in East Asia alone. For us, this is a huge opportunity to unlock growth potential in diversity-oriented businesses and industries that we know will deliver exponential commercial and societal benefits to women.
Women entrepreneurs hire 17 per cent more women than male counterparts and women use their incomes differently. They spend 90 cents of every dollar they earn on their families, including on their children’s education, health and nutrition compared with 30 to 40 cents by men, creating a strong multiplier effect.
Across Asia alone,?some 50 million people are expected to enter the middle class in the next two years, driving significant consumer growth, and women are expected to control most of the consumer purchasing power. What an opportunity!
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Q: How do you ensure women are the beneficiaries of your investments?
A: We look for investment opportunities in women-led/women-owned, companies whose workforces are primarily women, companies producing goods and services to meet the unmet needs of women and girls, and companies that are role models in promoting gender equality and diversity in their organisations.
Our typical value creation approach for portfolio companies involves strategic and operational improvements as well as interventions that deepen the gender and social impact within the business. We’ve developed a proprietary diagnostic and measurement tool, the Sweef Capital Gender ROI?, which assesses a company’s commitment to gender equality and diversity. We use this tool in our due diligence to establish a baseline assessment that identifies gaps in women’s economic empowerment and informs gender action plans. We work with our entrepreneurs to implement these plans through effective policies and practices, and training as necessary. In line with our portfolio monitoring, we track progress on the plans alongside financial performance.?
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Q: How do you source deals?
A: Our team comprises investment professionals with collectively than 50 years of working and investing experience in Southeast Asia. We provide local coverage in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines and can leverage our local proprietary networks and demonstrable track record in deal sourcing and investment execution. We’re able to identify entrepreneurs with business models where impact is at the core of their purpose, alongside the potential for scalability and delivering financial returns.
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Q: What hands-on expertise do you have?
A: We are partial to industries such as healthcare, education, sustainable food and consumer products because these build on specialisations developed within our team over time. We’ve worked extensively in healthcare, including building a pipeline of growth capital investments at prior firms including GE Capital. One of our team built her own regional company in the consumer sector, while other colleagues have had significant experience in education, food and beverage and consumer goods from their work at VC firms.
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Our team was behind Southeast Asia’s largest gender-focused fund financed by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the Investing in Women initiative. This resulted in six investments in women-led enterprises in Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines and we’ve already achieved our first exit.
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Q: How are you building your team?
A: Our team is diversified across nationalities, skills, educational backgrounds and experience. The breadth of skillsets includes direct transaction experience in private equity, investment banking, M&A advisory and operational experience. We’ve worked together since 2018.
We recently hired our Head of Impact Measurement and Management to support the investment team in optimising the impact of our investments. It’s important that we can articulate our work and the impact it delivers to the wider investment community. Our team comprises seven professionals located in Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and the US, with plans to invest in investment and operational resources over time as Sweef’s investment programs grow across markets.
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Q: How do you see your business scaling?
A: We see an increasing trend towards gender lens investing (GLI) and more funds being channelled to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). We will look to launch new funds to address gaps in regional markets in this area.
We will continue to evolve our impact frameworks and measurement and management systems to ground our investment approach. This includes the Gender ROI? methodology we apply in our own investments and that we’re making available to build the broader private equity and institutional investment community. As a global leader in this arena, the Sweef team is leading a consortium with complementary expertise to drive adoption of Gender ROI? and related tools and develop a global gender database to inform benchmarking, research and practice.?
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Q: What are the key ingredients of your success?
A: Perseverance comes to mind, especially as we were fundraising under the most challenging times. Despite the obstacles, we remained steadfast in our commitment to promote gender equality and diversity in our investments, and we’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far. We’re just getting started – GLI is a dynamic field to operate in and an exciting opportunity to create exponential impact.
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Q: What lesson have you learnt in your professional life that helps drive your approach?
A: Be clear about your purpose and choose partners and team members who bring similar passion, compassion and commitment to their work.
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Q: What advice would you like to share with our readers?
A: Think big and don’t be deterred by the inevitable challenges and obstacles that arise. If it’s worth doing, keep going.
Purpose Driven Leader, Impact Investing Advisor, Educator
1 年Thanks for sharing your inspiring vision, energy, and creativity Jennifer. Powerhouse!
Congratulations Jennifer Buckley
VC investor // Forbes 50 women in tech Europe
1 年Always admired Jennifer's work!