Naina Batra, CEO of AVPN, on Launching ImpactCollab and Scaling Cross-Border Giving Across Asia’s Social Investment Landscape

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Naina Batra, CEO of AVPN, offers a forward-looking and strategic view into the evolution of social investment across Asia. With the upcoming launch of ImpactCollab, AVPN is not merely introducing a platform — it is catalyzing an infrastructure for cross-border philanthropy and capital deployment across Asia’s fragmented social impact landscape. AVPN is a social investment network based in Asia and a leading ecosystem-builder that aims to move capital towards impact.

ImpactCollab is a platform that has been designed with the support of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It has been designed to address long-standing inefficiencies and trust deficits that hamper giving in the region. It targets a critical and under-leveraged segment: the region’s burgeoning population of centi-millionaires and high-net-worth individuals who are eager to give back but often lack the guidance, transparency, and assurance necessary to do so confidently. By functioning simultaneously as a knowledge base, a due diligence engine, and a matchmaking platform, ImpactCollab seeks to bridge the trust gap and remove systemic friction from philanthropic flows.

Batra notes this is Asia’s moment to lead. Faced with mounting social inequities, climate disasters, and reversals in gender parity and nutrition, the region demands urgent, coordinated responses. AVPN’s expansion underscores its commitment to mobilizing a pan-Asian community of social investors — from grantmakers and family offices to development finance institutions and policymakers.

An interesting feature of ImpactCollab lies in its governance maturity framework and data-driven nonprofit scorecard. These tools serve dual purposes: instilling confidence in funders while streamlining reporting burdens for nonprofits, many of whom face opaque and restrictive foreign funding environments. AVPN’s approach — aggregating capital, reducing duplicative reporting, and embedding transparency — is aimed at producing systemic change.

Batra's conviction is clear: wealth in Asia is abundant; what is lacking is a trusted, efficient conduit to mobilize that wealth toward lasting impact. ImpactCollab is AVPN’s bold answer to that challenge.

About Naina Batra

Naina Subberwal Batra is the CEO of AVPN, Asia’s largest network of social investors that aims to increase the flow of financial, human and intellectual capital for impact.

Naina’s leadership since 2013 has nurtured the AVPN community, growing the membership base by more than four times and elevating the organisation into a truly regional force for good. Under her direction, AVPN has grown from focusing only on venture philanthropy to supporting the entire ecosystem of social investors, from catalytic philanthropists to impact investors and corporate CSR professionals.

Naina is currently a Board Director for the Micronutrient Forum and the Blue Earth Foundation, as well as a Board Member of the Menzies Foundation and Blue Planet Environmental Solution Pte Ltd.

Naina was a fellow at the The Bellagio Center Residency Program in 2022 and was featured on the list of Asia's Most Influential by Tatler Asia in 2021. She was awarded by CSRWorks as one of Asia's Top Sustainability Superwomen in 2019.