This series of case studies for Temasek Trusts’ Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP) explores how businesses across Southeast Asia are embedding social and environmental purpose into their core operations while pursuing commercial growth. By documenting real-world journeys of four diverse enterprises, the project highlights how regionally rooted business models can deliver measurable impact—even when they fall outside mainstream narratives of impact investing.

Southeast Asia is home to a wide spectrum of enterprises that are, in many ways, inherently impact-driven—responding to local challenges, building community-rooted solutions, and operating with long-term social and environmental value in mind. Yet many of these businesses have remained outside the spotlight, in part because they do not always conform to the labels or categories set by the dominant international narrative on impact investing.

Their work may not always be framed using formal impact metrics or investment taxonomies—but in practice, they embody the very principles these frameworks seek to promote. As noted in research on Southeast Asia’s enterprise ecosystems, there is growing recognition that definitions of impact must evolve to reflect context-specific models that deliver both purpose and profit.

These case studies, written by Artha Global for CIIP seek to bring such stories to the fore—highlighting businesses that are quietly advancing inclusive, sustainable, and commercially viable models of growth across the region.

• Selection of Enterprises: Four Southeast Asian companies were chosen across sectors—agribusiness, consumer goods, private equity, and healthcare—based on their sustained commitment to impact and potential to offer transferable insights.
• Case Development: Each case was built through a combination of interviews, company materials, and partner feedback, structured in a business school case format that balances analytical depth with narrative clarity.
• Thematic Framing: The cases examine how these enterprises are embedding purpose across strategy, culture, capital raising, and operations—focusing on real decisions, trade-offs, and systems-building.
• Collaborative Validation: Each case was co-developed and reviewed with the companies involved to ensure accuracy and alignment, while preserving space for reflection and learning.

• Seven Case Studies Published: Featuring Japfa Ltd., Tolaram, ABC Impact, PHINMA Education, Nupo Ventures, Chia Pang Plastics, and Bintang Capital Partners—each offering a distinct lens on impact integration across industries and scales.
  
• Practice-Oriented Learning Resource: The casebook is being used by CIIP and ecosystem partners as a tool for funders, entrepreneurs, educators, and policymakers working to strengthen the regional impact economy.
• Narrative and Ecosystem Shift: By documenting grounded, context-specific examples of purpose-driven business, the project broadens how impact is understood—and who gets seen as leading it—in Southeast Asia.