Discovering My Purpose

This year at INSEAD has been instrumental for me in discovering my path going forward. Climate change is now front and centre in everyone’s mind and I decided earlier this year to play my part in solving the problem.

As I was exploring various ways through which I could leverage my investment banking background, an exciting opportunity was thrown at me. Climate VC, a pre-seed VC investing in climate tech, wanted an intern with my background. It was set up in February this year and had already made nine investments, so as you can imagine, a very fast investment cycle.

I was inspired by their goal to invest in 100 start-ups in the next two years across both hardware and software plays, and hence I decided to go ahead and pursue this exciting remote internship.

Given the relatively early life of the fund, my key responsibilities were to build out their investment thesis and source and execute transactions. By talking to highly motivated founders in the UK and Europe, I slowly was able to develop a thesis around carbon markets and carbon dioxide reduction.

Furthermore, while I sourced a number of transactions which other team members then worked on, I was particularly excited to source, conduct due diligence and execute a transaction for an EV retrofitting company – all within two months.

On top of this, I was able to build a very broad network amongst the climate tech VC and the start-up communities.

As I embark on another internship at Theia Ventures, India’s first climate-tech fund, I am glad to have a more tangible grasp of the VC industry in climate tech space and looking forward to learning about the emerging themes in the developing world.

Note: I am grateful for the financial support from the Hoffman Institute for the Climate VC internship.

This internship experience was supported by the INSEAD Hoffmann Institute Impact Internship Stipend and gifts from alumni.