Doing good and generating returns are not mutually exclusive, says Rebekah Lin
SINGAPORE (Aug 19): Rebekah Lin remembers the time when she started working at her father’s private equity firm Tembusu Partners. She was 25 and had no relevant experience but plenty of enthusiasm. One of her first tasks was to persuade investors to put their money in Tembusu’s funds. After six months of trying, she had to admit defeat. “I was really bad at it,” she tells The Edge Singapore in a recent interview.
Nine years later, Lin is better at her job. She has convinced quite a few people to cough up funds for other causes. She is co-founder of The Social Co, a company that helps to raise money for lesser-known charities such as Care Corner, which operates a youth centre in Teck Ghee, and Caregivers Alliance, which supports the carers of people with mental illness. She is also marketing and strategy director at FundedHere, an equity- and lending-based crowdfunding platform co-founded by her brother Daniel Lin. In addition, she runs her family foundation called Jia Foundation, which was set up in 2013. Jia’s beneficiaries include Bizlink Centre, a non-profit organisation that provides skills training and job assessments for people with disabilities. And, she helps to manage investor relations at Tembusu on an ad-hoc basis.
Recalling her early days at Tembusu, Lin says her father, Andy Lim — the company’s chairman — was not at all surprised by her failure to secure investors. With no track record and credibility, nobody was going to give their money to a 25-year-old, he told her.
Yet, that has not discouraged her from making her own investments, particularly impact investing. This refers to investing in companies to generate a beneficial social or environmental impact, without sacrificing financial returns. Critics say it is difficult to obtain attractive returns from such investments, but Lin begs to differ.
“Many people think impact investing equals charity or philanthropy. Some say your best scenario is when you don’t lose money. So, [to them,] it’s not about making money at all; it’s about doing good,” she says. “[To me], impact investing is really a combination of both [outcomes]. You can do well and good at the same time.”
Lin’s investing philosophy is largely influenced by her work in social issues. Apart from The Social Co and Jia Foundation, she was on the committee of the Yellow Ribbon Fund from 2011 to 2015. The fund helps finance rehabilitative and after-care programmes for ex-offenders. She was also a committee member of the Community Chest of Singapore from August 2016 to August 2018.
Lin says she has learnt a lot from working for her father. “If I can do half as well [as he], I would be very lucky.”
Investing in start-ups
What are the types of companies that interest her in impact investing? Lin says she typically looks at technology start-ups that operate in the healthcare, F&B and renewable energy sectors. She also prefers those that have graduated from a start-up incubator programme, as their seed funding would reflect confidence by other investors. “So, it is easy for us to follow up on investments,” says Lin, who usually gets into pre-Series A rounds.
While she declines to disclose her personal portfolio, Lin shares the example of SmartPeep, in which she has no stake. SmartPeep is building an artificial intelligence (AI) system to detect and anticipate when a person falls. The start-up is currently running trials at a healthcare centre and nursing home in Malaysia.
“What I like about SmartPeep is that instead of being reactive, their solution is preventive. They use AI to anticipate when an older person gets out of bed. If they look like they are about to fall, someone would come in before it actually happens,” Lin says. “Something like that definitely has scale. It can be replicated in different nursing homes.”
What about her exit strategy? Lin adopts a private equity approach, by giving a timeframe of seven to 10 years before considering taking cash off the table. This is because companies require time to realise their innovation ideas. “We believe in investing in ideas. They always say the second or third iteration of the original idea could be better,” she says.
Still, Lin is aware of the risks. “We go in with our eyes wide open. We know that 99% of start-ups fail. We go in prepared that they may not do well or make the most money.”
Shift to impact investing
As for the family’s investments, Lin usually holds a discussion four to five times a year with her father, mother — Lim Hwee Hua, a former minister in the Prime Minister’s Office — and two siblings. A major part of the investments, especially the big ones, are decided by her parents. Lin and her siblings decide on the smaller ones themselves.
In fact, Lin’s conviction in impact investing has rubbed off on her father. Her parents were initially sceptical about impact investing, as they saw it as a marketing tool rather than an actual investment opportunity. They wanted to take a waitand-see approach.
That view has changed through conferences, conversations with industry peers and cajoling from Lin. “I always joke that I was the impact investing whisperer. Over the years, I kept telling my dad that we should start an impact fund, as we already had the structure to do PE funds,” she says.
This year, the Tembusu Infratech Fund was launched to bridge the investment gap in infrastructure projects, amid trends such as massive urbanisation, climate change and inefficient existing infrastructure. Armed with a US$100 million ($138.8 million) war chest, the fund seeks to invest in companies that use technology to provide improved infrastructure services in Asia. The fund aims to generate high returns and is fully aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“If you had asked me eight years ago whether we would ever have started an impact-related fund, I think the answer would have been no, because traditional Asian families saw charity and business as two separate things — with no middle ground. But now, they are realising that it is possible,” says Lin.
Opportunities in ageing
Impact investing aside, Lin is currently pursuing a full-time master’s degree in gerontology at King’s College London. Gerontology is the study of old age, the process of ageing and the particular problems of old people. She hopes to use this knowledge to help the elderly in Singapore.
“To be honest, I never knew you could study ageing. But one of my mentors said: ‘Why don’t you look at it? It could be interesting.’ I didn’t want to be the typical young punk who works on an issue or is interested in it without understanding it,” she says.
The way Lin sees it, Singapore has a done a “decent job” so far in helping the elderly cope with the physical aspect of ageing. Where the country is lacking is in the emotional and social aspects of ageing. She noticed that some of her peers do not know how to engage or talk with the elderly, perhaps because of the language barrier or not knowing what to say. More seriously, the elderly are facing mental health issues and high suicide rates, says Lin.
There is an opportunity here to do good while generating returns. “In some sense, we are looking at investments [related to] ageing because Singapore is an ageing population. And it is a trend mirrored everywhere else in the world,” she says.
