"We correlate our income and impact at a structural level" Vinay Nair, CEO of Lightful

Karmic Capitalist - businesses with purpose

"How can we collectively increase the quantity and quality of giving to nonprofits, to charities, so that they can raise more awareness, raise more funds, deliver more impact in their communities?"
If there's a question that defines Lightful's work, I think Vinay shares it in this.
My guest on the Karmic Capitalist podcast this week is Vinay Nair, co-founder and CEO of Lightful. Lightful uses technology to accelerate impact in the social impact sector.
He'd just returned from an uplifting conference with the Gates Foundation (took some prodding to get this out - no easy namedrop from Nair!), and he shares with us how that works, and the amplification of good that comes from it.
Having a for-profit organisation whose clients are mostly nonprofit can be quite a tightrope to walk, and Vinay shares how Lightful "positively correlate ours income and impact" and the importance of that positive correlation being structural to avoid conflict of interest.
Vinay is also Resident Expert at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the Saïd Business School (that's some mouthful!), and I probe into what he's seeing in the generation that is coming through Saïd.
His shares an uplifting observation. When he's doing a session with students on impact investing or tech for good, they'll pretty much retort "of course, what else - Tech for bad? Non impactful investing?".
For them, the default language is "as if it were ever thus or certainly how it must be from today going forward. And I find that powerful inspirational.
Vinay is a thoughtful advocate. We run the gamut of business doing good and being profitable, of being a for-profit serving the nonprofit sector, the role of values, and much more.
He's an engaging conversationalist. Listen in to this episode of the Karmic Capitalist.

_______________
I host a weekly online workshop with CEOs of SMEs (10 to 100 employees approx) about scaling up, allowing them to step back and do more strategic work, and doing it in line with their values. Max 6 per session so we can have a real conversation.
If you'd like to join me, find a date that works for you here. They aren't charged for - you and I will both get value from the conversation.
Only CEOs / MDs apply - strictly peer-level conversation.