The ANDE Asia Annual Report 2025 highlights a year of collaboration, learning, and action across the region’s small and growing business (SGB) ecosystem. Amid evolving markets and increasing expectations around impact, inclusion, and climate outcomes, ANDE and its members continued to strengthen entrepreneurial ecosystems through practical capacity building, innovative programs, and strategic partnerships.

From flagship trainings like Investment Manager Training and SCALE 360 to member showcases, research dissemination, Access and Opportunity Learning Lab, and Climate and Environment Learning Lab, the report captures key milestones, member voices, and regional insights that shaped 2025. It also reflects on the collective progress made by ecosystem builders, investors, and partners working together to unlock capital, scale solutions, and drive inclusive economic growth—while setting the stage for deeper collaboration and impact in 2026.

This research explores the intersectional challenges affecting women micro-, small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs (MSMEs) in their access to financial products and services, and subsequent investment from financial institutions (FIs). Building on the previous studies of the challenges of women entrepreneurs (WEs) in accessing finance and gender lens investing landscape in Cambodia, this research further discusses intersectional approaches in examining the barriers to financial service by understanding the lived experiences of women MSMEs founders who come from different backgrounds. Using a Feminist Action Research methodology with 6 women entrepreneurs (1 woman with disability) as the lead data collectors, the study was conducted with 95 women MSMEs (2 LGBTQIA+, 10 women with disabilities) and 3 key informants in Phnom Penh and Battambang, between urban and rural demographics.

The study showed that diverse experiences and backgrounds of WEs – including age, ability status, religion, family composition, and sexual orientation – affect their access to financial services and expansion of their business activities. Emphasising the lived experiences of women entrepreneurs, a power dynamics analysis was conducted using the ‘Gender at Work’ tool to provide recommendations that would enable the products and services offered FIs to be designed in a way that enables diverse WEs to formalise, scale, and create impact, which also makes them more attractive as pipeline companies to investors. As the focus of this study was predominantly on the perceptions of WEs, it is recommended that studying FIs is a priority for future research to explore their initiatives and any gender-inclusive frameworks that address the intersectional experiences of WEs.

The adoption of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards is relevant not only because investors are more inclined to consider them in their investment decisions but also due to their potential positive impact on sustainable development. While ESG implementation is still mostly voluntary, governments around the world are increasingly integrating these standards into their legal frameworks. Thus, understanding how the law supports ESG adoption becomes essential. However, the law alone is not sufficient to ensure that companies apply these standards. Investment is also needed to guarantee that the impact of ESG practices is long-lasting. In this paper we present our findings on how legal frameworks of 10 countries support ESG standards implementation, and what funding alternatives are available, particularly to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

La adopción de estándares Ambientales, Sociales y de Gobernanza (ASG, o ESG por sus siglas en inglés) es relevante no solo porque los inversionistas están más inclinados a considerarlos en sus decisiones de inversión, sino también debido a su potencial impacto positivo en el desarrollo sostenible, por medio de las Pequeñas Empresas en Crecimiento (PEC).

Si bien la implementación de los criterios ASG es todavía mayoritariamente voluntaria, los gobiernos de todo el mundo están integrando cada vez más estos estándares en sus marcos legales. Por lo tanto, comprenda cómo la ley apoya la adopción de los criterios ASG se vuelve esencial. Sin embargo, la ley por sí sola no es suficiente para asegurar que las empresas apliquen estos estándares. También se necesita inversión para garantizar que el impacto de las prácticas ASG sea duradero.

En este documento presentamos nuestros hallazgos sobre cómo los marcos legales de 10 países apoyan la implementación de estándares ASG, y qué alternativas de financiamiento están disponibles, particularmente para las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PyMEs).

A new report, Just Climate Transitions in Bangladesh: Accelerating Multistakeholder Action in Textile and Apparel and Construction Industries, examines how Bangladesh can pursue low-carbon growth while protecting workers and sustaining competitiveness.

Bangladesh’s economy expanded 24-fold between 1980 and 2023, while GHG emissions rose 176%. The textile, apparel, and construction sectors—representing 74% of industrial GDP, 80% of the industrial workforce, and around half of industrial emissions—sit at the center of a just transition challenge.

Developed with support from the H&M Foundation and Laudes Foundation, and informed by 100+ local and international stakeholders, the report identifies seven interlinked priorities and calls for coordinated action across industry, workers’ organizations, policymakers, development actors, finance, and philanthropy.

India’s waste management sector is at a critical inflection point. Rapid urbanisation, evolving consumption patterns, and rising waste volumes have outpaced the capacity of existing systems. While regulatory frameworks have matured, implementation remains fragmented. Only 54% of waste is processed; the rest is either informally recovered or dumped in over 3,100+ dumpsites across the country.

The SAAF Cities initiative was launched to explore the feasibility of a platform-based approach to scaling innovations in urban waste management. This study drew on primary engagement and secondary research with 32 stakeholders—including Municipal corporations/Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), startups, corporates,
and ecosystem enablers, alongside a review of over 700 startups (small and medium enterprises) and 100+ innovation applications.

Jointly anchored by Villgro and the Socratus Foundation, with support from HDFC Bank, the report aims to identify systemic gaps and key priority areas for innovation, focusing on financing, regulatory challenges, and mechanisms to operationalize solutions and models at scale, to advance circularity principles and enhance
material recovery in waste management.

At Common Good Marketplace, we believe that markets can, and must, be redesigned to serve the common good. This report affirms that belief and was a unique opportunity for us to research an area of corporate activity that holds significant promise to accelerate human flourishing alongside more equitable and resilient practices: social procurement.

As global priorities shift in response to economic, environmental, and social pressures, the role of corporate procurement is evolving. What once focused narrowly on cost and efficiency is now expanding to embrace accountability, inclusion, and impact. Social procurement represents a transformational opportunity to realign purchasing power with purpose, and to do so in ways that are not only ethical, but strategic, scalable, and measurable.

This report, developed in partnership with SAP and informed by insights from ecosystem leaders from around the world, highlights the critical importance of unlocking the full potential of social procurement. By embedding measurable and verifiable results into procurement structures, we can move from intention to accountability, and from outputs to definable results.

While enthusiasm for systems change has grown steadily over the past decade, we find a significant gap persists between this enthusiasm and execution. Funders attempting to implement systems change consistently face 9 challenges, including unclear outcome attribution, long commitment horizons, and complex stakeholder coordination.

When faced with these challenges, it is understandable why many funders find themselves defaulting to patching the system rather than changing it. The pressures are real: boards expect clear metrics, program timelines demand quick wins, and established processes reward predictable outcomes. These institutional realities often nudge funders toward incremental fixes, even when they recognize deeper change is needed.

This report names and explores the challenges in implementing systems change and provides steps to navigate them. We draw on the authors’ 14 years of experience implementing systems change programs in the Global South across affordable housing, early childhood education, and gender equity. Foundation leaders (e.g., CEOs, principals, and other executives) can use this guide to implement systems change in their work, finding entry points that align with their foundation’s current capacity, constraints, and strategic objectives.

Funders can choose to lean in and make their intent to change the system explicit. Doing so would offer the potential for permanent, transformative change that continues long after the intervention or program ends. This choice requires abandoning the comfort of clear attribution and predictable outcomes and accepting that it may be impossible to claim credit for your contributions. The communities you serve rarely need you to prove exactly which intervention created change, but they do need you to commit to changing the conditions that trap them in cycles of inequity.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in spite of it.” – Nelson Mandela

Reimagining gender lens investing futures is both a reflection on the field today and a hopeful vision for where it could go, grounded in the real work of field builders across geographies and sectors. These practitioners continue to defend gender’s continued relevance to finance in the face of resistance. They are also expanding its role, reimagining its potential as a tool for change, and building the infrastructure needed to sustain that change over the next decade.

Criterion Institute has long defined field-building as the weaving together of ideas, people, and activities in ways that enable systems change. In this moment, the field of gender lens investing must act to both celebrate and support risk-takers. It must also bring to light overlooked wisdom and hold the space for multiple definitions of what ‘good’ looks like.

This report comes ten years after the first Criterion State of the field of gender lens investing report. In 2015, the field’s broad aim was to prove that gender mattered in investing. Today, field builders are asking bolder questions: How do we shift power? What does it look like to invest in healing, not just scaling the field? Which systems should be redesigned?

It is a snapshot of ambition rather than a map of all activity. It makes visible ideas, organizations and activities that don’t always attract headlines or capital. It invites funders to expand what they see as “fundable.” And it offers a broader story of what gender lens investing could be when defined by those closest to the work.