1 a) Take us through the Impact Investment Exchange (IIX)’s work in India and what are some of the practice areas that IIX has been focusing on?

IIX is transforming lives in India through innovative finance, addressing systemic barriers, and empowering underserved communities. Our flagship Women’s Livelihood Bond™ (WLB) series, listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, uplifts women in underserved regions and anchors the Orange Bond Initiative™, which integrates gender equity with sustainability across UN SDGs.

We’ve mobilized over $135 million in India, impacting 5+ million lives, focusing on underserved geographies, particularly rural areas where enterprises face systemic challenges in accessing financing. By blending private capital with impactful initiatives, we’re fostering a new era of economic empowerment and sustainability in India’s most vulnerable communities.

1 b) In this context, it would be helpful to understand the genesis of IIX Intelligence and what this platform aims to achieve.

IIX Intelligence™ is a pioneering platform designed to address the critical need for reliable, actionable impact data. It empowers stakeholders with actionable, reliable impact data to align investments with UN SDGs. This platform leverages real-time analytics to bridge investment gaps, driving data-informed decisions that deliver measurable social and financial outcomes.

Powered by IIX Values™, it integrates voices from the last mile—communities, employees, and suppliers—ensuring transparency and accountability in impact reporting. Together, these tools redefine how the impact is assessed and optimized, unlocking scalable, sustainable solutions.

2 It will be helpful for our readers to understand the use case(s) and application areas where impact data could help with tangible decision-making.

Could you share a few case studies where IIX Values and Intelligence created this pathway from data to decision-making; and how could a similar approach be adopted for MSME financing in India?

Impact data transforms decision-making by pinpointing needs, guiding capital allocation, and tracking social outcomes.

In the Women’s Livelihood Bond™ (WLB) series, IIX Values™ measures and validates financing impact for women-led MSMEs in underserved geographies, including India. This data ensures better-targeted outcomes, builds investor confidence, and attracts philanthropic and private capital at scale—creating a replicable model for gender-lens financing in India.

The IIX Growth Fund™ uses benchmarks from IIX Intelligence™ to screen entities, aligning investments with industry standards. This data-driven approach identifies barriers faced by women entrepreneurs and tailors’ financial solutions to address them. For example, customized loan structures and interest rates have empowered women-led MSMEs, fostering equitable growth across sectors.

In India, a similar data-centric approach could optimize MSME financing by designing financial products that are accessible, context-sensitive, and scalable, ensuring capital directly supports local community needs.

3 Please take us through IIX’s newly launched Orange Seal™ feature. How does it align with the vision of IIX and your work with the Orange Bond? What are the gaps or untapped opportunities within the impact investing space that the Orange Seal aims to address?

The Orange Seal™ is a certification for businesses driving measurable gender equity and climate action. Powered by IIX Values™, IIX’s impact assessment platform, it empowers companies by providing global recognition, enhancing their market credibility, and opening doors to diverse opportunities—whether through capital raising, supply chain inclusion, or stakeholder engagement.

Aligned with IIX’s vision of inclusive financial markets, the Orange Seal™ complements the Orange Bond Initiative™, which mobilizes capital for gender-responsive investments. While Orange Bonds channel funding, the Seal builds credibility for businesses delivering tangible impact outcomes. Setting rigorous impact standards catalyzes systemic change, enabling enterprises to align with ESG goals and attract diverse stakeholders.

4 a) Could you share the key components of Orange Seal™'s certification process? What is the nature of impact-focused data that process aims to collect and certify?

b) How could enterprises better prepare themselves and align their internal processes, to be eligible for certification by the Orange Seal?

The Orange Seal™ certification process is an end-to-end digital process and is applicable for organizations irrespective of location or size. There are two types of Seal - unverified and verified (with the stakeholders of the entity)

• Registration and Assessment: Complete an online survey on IIX Values™ (40-45 minutes), covering multiple themes such as gender equality metrics, employee retention, leadership diversity, workplace anti-discrimination policies, and regulatory compliance
• Impact Verification (Optional): Validate reported policies and practices through last-mile stakeholder feedback (customers, employees, or suppliers) —gathered via call, SMS, or email. This is available in multiple languages across South and Southeast Asia.
• Seal and Recognition: Organizations receive the Orange Seal™ and a brand book with guidelines to showcase their certification on their digital and offline platforms.

To prepare for Orange Seal certification, enterprises should embed gender-focused practices into their operations. For instance, this includes assessing their workplace policies, implementing fair remuneration practices, and promoting inclusive leadership development.

5 Likewise, how does the Certification align itself with expectations and (global and domestic) industry best practices that impact-aligned investors seek to achieve? In what way could an Orange Seal certification help investors build greater transparency and visibility of the impact outcomes they seek to measure, as well as align their investment strategies?

The Orange Seal™ certification aligns with global benchmarks like the Orange Bond Principles, UN Women’s CEDAW, and ILO Core Conventions amongst others, offering a robust framework for measuring gender and climate impact.

For investors, the Seal delivers:

1. Enhanced Transparency: Verified data provides clarity on gender and climate outcomes, enabling investors to meet impact-aligned mandates with confidence.
2. Accountability: The Seal acts as a signal of trust, assuring investors that their capital supports meaningful and measurable change.
3. Strategic Insights: The Seal scorecard offers actionable data to identify gaps and opportunities, allowing investors to collaborate with investees on tailored gender action plans, enhancing inclusivity across their portfolios.

Additionally, the Orange Seal™ certification is available for investors who seek a portfolio-wide customized assessment, ensuring a cohesive and scalable approach to gender and climate goals.

6 In a similar vein, take us through IIX’s Orange Bond Rating. In what way could this rating build the pathway to catalyze more capital to achieve gender-equitable outcomes? What do bond issuers need to consider while applying for the Rating?

The Orange Bond Rating tool is built on the IIX Values™ platform to evaluate bond issuances based on adherence to the Orange Bond Principles™, focusing on:

• Gender-Positive Capital Allocation: Proceeds from the Bonds should finance projects benefiting women, girls, and gender minorities, and ESG-aligned initiatives
• Gender-Lens Capacity and Diversity in Leadership: Issuers of Orange Bonds must demonstrate gender-lens capacity (women or gender minorities) in leadership or core operational teams
• Transparency in Investment Process and Reporting: Issuers must maintain transparency through upfront frameworks, outlining the intended impact, project selection, and monitoring aligned with gender-lens principles

Overall, it provides investors with a trusted framework to assess the social and climate impact of their investments, fostering trust and catalyzing capital for gender equity. The tool assists second-party opinion providers (SPOs) in determining whether the issuance is “Advancing” to align, “Aligned”, or holds “Outstanding” alignment against each Principle

An essential feature is the “last-mile” impact confirmation leveraging IIX Values™ to gather data directly from women impacted in the value chain of the key activities supported by the issuance.

For Bond Issuers:

To optimize their rating, issuers should:

• Alignment with Principles: Ensure that the bond's use of proceeds, leadership diversity, and reporting practices align with the Orange Bond Principles™
• External Review: Obtain an external review from an Approved Orange Bond Verifier to confirm adherence to these principles (Certification course available for this)

The rating builds investor confidence while positioning issuers as leaders in inclusive finance, driving measurable gender and climate outcomes.

7 Looking ahead, how do you see the space of impact measurement and verification evolving in India? What are the constraints that would need to be addressed for these practices to be adopted at scale? How do you foresee tools like IIX Intelligence, Orange Seal, and the Orange Bond Rating influencing the broader financial ecosystem and helping scale impact investment globally?

India’s impact measurement is constrained by fragmented data systems, lack of standardized frameworks, and inadequate inclusion of SMEs and last-mile voices. SMEs, vital to the economy, often lack the resources to track gender and climate outcomes, while impact data rarely captures feedback from workers, suppliers, and underserved communities. This undermines trust and hinders efficient capital allocation.

Tools like IIX Intelligence™, Orange Seal™, and Orange Bond Rating™ are addressing these gaps by embedding transparency and accountability into investment decisions. With last-mile verification available in 17 languages, they ensure accessibility even in remote areas, directing capital toward sustainable, high-impact initiatives. Scaling impact measurement in India requires cross-sector collaboration, stronger policies, and technological integration to unlock transformative change.

Empowering underserved communities begins with accurate and inclusive impact data. By amplifying the voices of SMEs and last-mile stakeholders, we can rebuild trust, improve accountability, and drive scalable solutions for sustainable development