HKVCA ESG Award of Excellence 2019

2019 Winners

The HKVCA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 HKVCA ESG Award of Excellence: Baring Private Equity Asia (Hexaware), and CDH Investments (Belle).

For the 2019 Award, the Association has received a total of 16 ESG case studies from 14 private equity and venture capital firms across Asia.  All the ESG case studies are available at the HKVCA website below. The two winners were honored at the award ceremony at the HKVCA Annual Gala Dinner in January 2020.

Interview with the winners

List of Entrants (alphabetically by company name):

  1. ADM Capital (Rent-to-Own)
  2. Ascendent Capital Partners (China Automation Group)
  3. Baring Private Equity Asia (Hexaware)
  4. Capsquare Asia Partners (PT Champ Resto Indonesia)
  5. CDH Investment (Belle)
  6. CITIC PE (Shanghai SUS Environment)
  7. CVC Capital Partners (Arteria)
  8. Hahn & Co (H-Line shipping)
  9. KKR (Barghest Building Performance)
  10. Lunar (Castle Snack Strategy)
  11. Lunar (UCCA Group)
  12. Mekong Capital (Pharmacity)
  13. Navis Capital Holding (Saitex)
  14. Sinovation Ventures (Waterdrop)
  15. Sinovation Ventures (Mingyi Zhonghe Technology (Beijing) )
  16. TPG (UPL)

View all the case studies here.


Guideline

The HKVCA is launching its 2nd ESG Award of Excellence to recognize significant environmental, social and governance (ESG) related initiatives and achievements in Asian private equity and venture capital-backed companies.

The HKVCA ESG Award is given only once every two years. The last award was in late 2017 and attracted a diverse set of entries, with Hahn & Co’s Ssangyong Cement and TPG Asia’s Grand Royal Group emerging as eventual winners (please go to www.hkvca.com.hk/en/ESG2017.aspx for the 2017 entrant list and cases). We now invite firms to submit their applications for this year’s ESG Award of Excellence.

ESG encompasses a wide range of areas, including but not limited to energy efficiency, pollution reduction, green initiatives, employee safety, supply chain quality control, customer welfare, cybersecurity, community relations, governance structure, and board effectiveness. ESG initiatives are often taken to address an existing problem or weakness.  At other times, such initiatives are designed to create brand differentiation, or go hand-in-hand with productivity or efficiency improvement projects. ESG work is part and parcel of the risk management and value creation activities inherent in the private equity and venture capital hands-on investment model.
Who is eligible?

If you:

  • are an Asian PE or VC firm, or the Asian arm of a US or European firm; and
  • have an Asia-based investee company currently in your portfolio or exited during 2019, where the ESG work that you have initiated makes a compelling case study, then you are eligible to submit an entry.

How to Enter  

Please submit a one-page document on one portfolio company where a critical ESG upgrade or upgrades has taken place as a result of your initiative. Please provide:

  • Background information on the company, including nature of the business, size, geographical scale and location, and in which year you invested in the company.
  • As many details as possible on the specific ESG initiatives and changes that you have introduced.
  • If there has been sufficient time for these initiatives and changes to bear fruit, their impact on the company and on its stakeholders.
  • Focus only on the two or three changes that have been most instrumental in addressing existing weaknesses and/or in creating value for the business.
  • Any supporting evidence that contribute to the narrative and quantifiable results or milestones achieved (whether financial, operational or social) will be valuable.
All entries should be emailed to Kamy Chan at kamy@hkvca.com.hk. The deadline for your entry is 5:00p.m. on Friday, November 8, 2019.
A panel of judges consisting of LP members from the HKVCA’s ESG Committee will select two winners from all entries. The winners will be announced in December 2019 and the decision of the panel of judges will be final. The Award takes place once every two years, which provides sufficient time for new ESG initiatives to develop within Asian PE/VC portfolio companies.
The HKVCA may use some or all of the entries on its website, publications (online and offline) and/or in its training materials. Please do not include any confidential information in your entry documents. By submitting an entry, you give your consent to the HKVCA to use your entry documents on its website, publications and/or training materials, and acknowledge that there is no confidential information in your entry documents.