Asia's problem isn't money, it’s the lack of coordination, says AVPN's Naina Subberwal Batra

NEW DELHI – Naina Subberwal Batra does not like the number $26tn, even though she is the one who keeps repeating it.

It is the figure the Asian Development Bank has put on what developing Asia and the Pacific need by 2030 to keep growing, cut poverty and cope with climate change. It's a cumulative estimate rather than an annual one and a number that AVPN's chief executive has spent the past year turning into an organising principle of her network's work. 

Sitting down with Pioneers Post on the sidelines of AVPN's Global Conference in New Delhi last month, she was blunt about what the number actually means, and equally blunt about what it doesn't.

“It's the ADB's estimate, the cumulative figure for developing countries in Asia and the Pacific to sustain growth, eradicate poverty and address climate change up to 2030,” she told Pioneers Post. “But look beyond the number. It's not just what the number is. It's what it signifies,” she said. “The sheer size of it means we need to collaborate, and we need to collaborate urgently. It's not really about the money not being present,” she added. “It's about the coordination. Making sure the money is aggregated and spent in the right place.”

That nuance of the problem being that of coordination, rather than a gap in funding, was the mainstay of nearly everything Subberwal Batra shared with Pioneers Post over the course of a wide-ranging conversation. 

She talked about Asia's reluctance to fund its own institutions, a coalition she is deliberately not yet willing to announce, why she chose India for AVPN's first conference there in the network's 13-year history, and a gender-funding record she called shameful more than once.

Not a problem of money

Asia is not short of wealth. The region counts more than 1,000 billionaires, and Subberwal Batra has said before that the network's central challenge is “the lack of Asian money” flowing into the sector, not a lack of Asian money existing. Her explanation for that gap has nothing to do with generosity and everything to do with infrastructure, the unglamorous, unfunded kind.

“The gap is really around trusted infrastructure,” she said. “Even where infrastructure exists like AVPN, where there are networks, there are ecosystems, some people are reluctant to pay for it,” she added. 

“Everybody needs plumbing. We all need the pipes for the water to flow through. Someone has to pay for the pipes. Someone has to pay for the roads. Our problem in this sector is that we're reluctant to pay for the infrastructure, so credible, transparent, well-run infrastructure doesn't develop.”

She offered AVPN itself as evidence of what happens when that infrastructure does get built.

The New Delhi gathering drew more than 2,400 delegates from over 50 markets, its largest yet, and AVPN says its membership has grown roughly fourfold since Subberwal Batra took over the network in 2013. “Our own growth over the last 15 years is testament to what happens when it's there. People use it, and use it,” she said. “This conference is our largest ever, and the kinds of partnerships that are coming out of it are truly revolutionary.”

No coalition until the funders show up

The New Delhi conference's Capital Coordination Group sessions are supposed to feed into a financing coalition that AVPN wants on the table at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok this October. Asked what happens if that coalition doesn't come together in time, Batra didn't mince words.

If it doesn't [materialise], I'm not going to announce it... I hate public commitments without any backbone.

“I would like the coalition to materialise,” she said. “If it doesn't, I'm not going to announce it. That's what's going to happen,” she added. “I hate public commitments without any backbone,” she said. “Our very clear intention is to get the funders lined up behind it before we announce any sort of coalition.”

It's a statement with gravitas. 

It also happens to be the whole of AVPN's pitch to the sector. A coalition announced before the money is committed is exactly the kind of promise Subberwal Batra says the region can't afford anymore.

Why India, and why now

AVPN has run 13 conferences. This was the first held in India, and its CEO had a two-part answer for why.

“India is one of the largest economies in Asia, with 1.5 billion people. India is one of the most important countries in the world,” she said. “If India does not meet the SDGs, Asia will not meet the SDGs. If Asia doesn't meet the SDGs with 66.3% of the population of the world (population), the world doesn't meet the SDGs,” she said. “So coming to India is very important, because we're shining a huge spotlight into India.”

If India does not meet the SDGs, Asia will not meet the SDGs. If Asia doesn't meet the SDGs... the world doesn't meet the SDGs.

The second reason was less about India's weight and more about what happens inside it. 

“India is probably the world's biggest social innovation lab,” she said. “We've heard over the last two and a half days that a pilot study is 50 to 100,000 and scale comes at millions. Every government minister, every programme person who stood up talked about millions of lives, programmes that are massive,” she said. “If you want a demonstration of scale, India is the place to do it.” 

She pointed to the country's mandatory corporate social responsibility law. Companies above a certain size must direct 2% of profit to corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a source of what she called credible capital now flowing into the sector, alongside steadily growing private philanthropy.

Asked what the choice of India meant to her personally, as an Indian herself, she gave an answer that doubled as a mild rebuke of her own country.

“Honestly, I was concerned and they're going to hate me for saying this, because I'm very candid. But because of the sheer size of India, it tends to be an echo chamber within itself,” she said. 

“I'm an Indian, a very proud Indian, but we don't tend to listen to what's happening in other places. I genuinely feel, after living 15 years in Asia, that India can learn a lot from what other Asian countries are doing.”

I'm an Indian, a very proud Indian, but we don't tend to listen to what's happening in other places.

She pointed to demographics as one example. 

“We have a very young population but we also have a population that's living longer. Especially in the cities, we've made this transition to nuclear families. People are living longer, living with comorbidities and disease, and living alone because their children have moved away. These are problems Japan is facing. These are problems Singapore is facing. We need to learn how to deal with them, and we need to listen to what other countries are doing.” 

The point of holding the conference at home, she said, was as much about her Indian colleagues seeing the rest of Asia as it was about the rest of Asia seeing India: “I really wanted my Indian peers and colleagues to see the richness and diversity that exists in Asia around us.”

A gender record that's “shameful”

Subberwal Batra grew visibly more animated on the subject of gender funding, a topic she returned to unprompted more than once. Asked about AVPN's gender-equality gap findings, she didn't soften them.

“It's a huge issue across Asia,” she said. “Most of the gender funding comes from foreign foundations. Most Asian funders refuse to identify themselves as gender funders. We have tried very hard to engage Asian funders around women's economic empowerment, girls' education, women's health, gender issues, equity issues and most funders are, for whatever reason, very reluctant to publicly take a stand or identify themselves as gender funders.”

We have tried very hard to engage Asian funders... and most funders are, for whatever reason, very reluctant to publicly take a stand or identify themselves as gender funders.

The network set itself a target of raising $25m for gender-related work. It hasn't hit that mark. 

“We have not reached that target but we are still trying, and trying hard, which is why in this conference we've intentionally put a gender lens across every single panel,” she said. AVPN has deployed more than $5m toward women's economic empowerment work, she said. “But that's just a drop in the ocean.”

She declined to single out any one country as the problem. 

“It's not one country. It's not India, it's not Malaysia, it's not Indonesia, it's not Myanmar. No Asian country right now can get up and say that we have achieved all the objectives we want to achieve. And it's shameful – 50% of the world's population, and we're still talking about gender equity. I'm not even talking about the whole rainbow definition of gender here. Even if we just talk about women and girls, there are significant issues. We need to be open and transparent about what we're finding difficult to address. Every culture represents and respects gender equity,” she said. “So what is our problem? I really don't understand.”

Pressed on India specifically – where cultural and religious tradition often invokes reverence for women even as the country ranks poorly on gender-equality measures – she pointed to a gap between building infrastructure and maintaining it. 

“I don't think it's a lack of awareness. I think it's an implementation issue,” she said, citing India's national sanitation programme as an example. “The number of toilets set up have been massive. But are those toilets still working? Did we have the plumbing in place for the drainage and sewerage system? It's a point of coordination. It's a problem of execution. We don't realise that every time a woman drops out of the workforce or drops out of school, it's a direct hit on productivity and GDP.”

The number of toilets set up have been massive. But are those toilets still working?

The bluntest exchange of the interview concerned AVPN's own numbers. 

A pilot of the network's gender-lens giving principles found that only 20% of funding allocations reviewed actually met the standard, even where organisations' internal gender practices looked sound on paper. It is the same self-reported-versus-audited gap she has spent years telling the rest of the sector to fix. 

To give credit where it is due, she didn't dispute the finding. 

“Exactly. It is,” she said. “The sector needs to take a mirror and take a hard look at itself, because I think they like to believe they have met these benchmarks, they are at this particular standard. But in reality, they're not.”

Growing a network, deliberately more Asian

AVPN's membership has expanded under Subberwal Batra's tenure, and she credits it less to marketing than to scarcity. There simply aren't many other platforms doing what AVPN does. 

“There is a huge scarcity of networks and platforms like ours,” she said. “Even people who say they don't work outside their national borders still want to be part of AVPN, because they want to learn from other people, they want to meet their peers. A lot of times they meet their own colleagues in the same country at an AVPN event, which they don't do at home.”

She was pointed about why she believes the conference keeps growing. 

“People don't travel because they want a speaking slot, or because they want to come and tick the box and be seen. They come because they're interested in learning, interested in collaborating, interested in making partnerships. The fact that our conferences have grown year on year is testament to that.”

But she also flagged a gap in AVPN's own membership that she wants closed. 

A large share of the network's members work in Asia but aren't Asian. Multinationals and foreign funding organisations rather than institutions rooted in the region. “I've told my team, and given myself a really hard target, that in the next five years we want many more Asian organisations because until we bring them into the room, we are not going to see the change that I think you and I want to see.”

In the next five years we want many more Asian organisations because until we bring them into the room, we are not going to see the change that I think you and I want to see.

Still an outlier, 13 years in

Subberwal Batra has described herself before as an unlikely candidate for the AVPN job she took in 2013. Thirteen years later, asked what the hardest calls of her tenure have been, she didn't point to a single decision so much as a standing discomfort with declaring victory.

“I think I'm still an outsider. I think I'm still pretty much an outlier,” she said. “For me, the hardest calls have been to continue to challenge ourselves, to keep thinking that this is not enough and we need to grow more, and to set very ambitious targets for my team. I feel like we're probably on round two of a very long ladder. We are the most successful social impact platform there is globally. But we're in such a large continent that even 900 organisations is just a small speck.”

Asked to explain 13 years of growth in hindsight, she claimed less certainty than the record might suggest. 

“If you had to make me look back and say how did we get here, I really don't know. Part of it has been listening to what the network and the various stakeholders are telling me. And more importantly, being bold,” she said. 

“At the end of the day, what's the worst thing that can happen?” she told Pioneers Post. “You'll be wrong. You can correct yourself. But if you don't try, you're never going to get there,” she said. 

“A lot of people think, oh my God, that's impossible. Nothing's impossible. You just start. You put one step in front of the other, and before you know it, you're at a destination.”

Her closing message? Get bold, or get out of the way

Asked towards the end of the interview whether there was a question that hadn't come up, she turned the opening into her final point.

Nothing's impossible. You just start. You put one step in front of the other, and before you know it, you're at a destination.

In the financial world, investors hold corporates accountable, she said. 

“It's very important to hold philanthropy accountable too. Where is the money? How much is actually being deployed? Are you really being strategic about your deployment, or are you overthinking it?” she said. 

“Philanthropy money especially is money that's meant to be given away. So why are you so scared of making a mistake?,” she said.

“Take that chance. Be bold. Give.” she added. “That's what I would keep asking.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. It follows Pioneers Post's earlier reporting from the AVPN Global Conference 2026, Asia's impact network tells its own billionaires to step up.