About Us

Get to know us

Truvalu.enterprises is a Netherlands-based impact investment company that actively participates in the development of agri-SMEs in Asia, Africa, and Latin-America. We partner with high-growth potential agri-SMEs to provide them with Growth Capital, Business Development Support, and Market Access allowing them to substantially increase their value. Our aim is to build competitive, inclusive agri-businesses and fair value chains for social impact and economic returns. We also ensure that the business provides consumers with fair products.

The investment size varies between € 250,000 and € 500,000 per company. The business development support provided by Truvalu.enterprises is concentrated on improving key areas of the business, such as operational process, marketing, and sales, financial administration, corporate governance, human resource management, procurement, ICT, and communications. Other than these, the company’s business operations are expanded by introducing its products and services to local and international networks of clients, business partners (distributors, retail companies), and export partners.
In Bangladesh, Truvalu.enterprises started its operations in 2017. The investment amount ranges from € 250,000 and € 500,000. We have managed to invest in diversified SMEs that produce agro products such as dairy, poultry, jute product manufacturer, coir, and coco pith producer, pulse processing business, crab fattening, and many others. As agriculture is the largest employment sector in Bangladesh, providing employment to 40.15% of the working population, this industry has the most impact on the macroeconomic objectives. Yet, many SMEs do not have the required capital to remain competitive in the market. In such an environment, Truvalu.enterprises has created the opportunity to improve the economic condition of many agricultural entrepreneurs. By the end of 2019, our investments will have aided at least 17 local SMEs. Business Development Support is also provided to these companies along with introducing them to other companies to retain mutual benefits. All these helped to create a business network all around Bangladesh that allows the companies to create an optimal value chain.

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Mission

Truvalu.enterprises invests in early-stage agri-businesses with excellent potential to create local jobs, global networks, and a sustainable impact combined with economic returns.

Vision

Our vision is to build competitive, inclusive agri-businesses and sustainable value chains in emerging markets in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America for social impact, economic returns and to provide consumers with fair products.

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Goals

SDG 2

Zero Hunger

This goal focuses on ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. This would be accomplished by progressively improving land and soil quality and ensuring sustainable food production systems, thus doubling agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers (especially women and indigenous people).

SDG 8

Decent Work and Economic Growth

By investing in scalable agri-food SMEs and training staff and business development experts, Truvalu contributes to:

  • Creating sustainable employment for both qualified and unqualified workers
  • Increasing knowledge and skits in the workforce
  • Promoting market-based solutions that further improve the sector's productivity and added value
  • Building local ecosystems for business development and investment services
  • Building brands for international markets that can also be adopted in local markets

SDG 12

Responsible Production & Consumption

Truvalu.enterprises only invests in agri-SMEs that adopt responsible sourcing models to purchase their supplies from their large network of smallholders (growing to at least 500 farmers per SME during the investment period). It adopts a fair pricing model for its branded products by equally shoring the price premium in international markets between value chain actors.

Meet our expert team

Bangladesh Team

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Sharawwat Islam, CFA

Managing Director

With more than 18 years of experience in the financial sector of Bangladesh, Sharawwat is leading Truvalu Bangladesh as the Managing Director. She joined Truvalu.enterprises in 2018 from her passion to work with impact investments. She is responsible for overseeing the impact investments, local and foreign advisory services, entrepreneurial capacity development programs, and implementation of the country strategy. She also represents Truvalu in the Boards of investee companies. Sharawwat is a CF...
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Anwar Mostafa Sarker

Head of Finance, Administration & HR

An accounting professional with more than 9 years of experience, Anwar has been handling the overall financial, accounting, administrative, and HR affairs of Truvalu as well as assisting SMEs to establish proper financial management and internal control systems. Before joining Truvalu, he worked for a leading audit firm in Bangladesh, where he served for more than 30 client engagements of the firm. He also worked for a leading IT company and an apparel manufacturing company in senior managerial ...
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M. G. Shaon, CFA

Senior Investment Associate

Shaon supports Truvalu
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Mohammad Hossain Aala

Business Acceleration Expert

Hossain supports Truvalu's core team in the initial due diligence process, investment analysis and BDS delivery of prospective SMEs. Before joining Truvalu, he worked for one of the renowned asset management companies in Bangladesh and covered financial analysis of more than 10 companies from 3 different sectors. Hossain completed his Bachelor of Business Administration from the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. He majored in Finance and cleared the level 2 exam of Ch...
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Anuj Kumar Mondal

Senior Officer MEAL & Programmes

Anuj is a key team member of Truvalu Bangladesh. He is responsible for tracking project progress and results- how the projects are advancing to the set objectives and goals. He also contributes to project data management, capturing learning and imparting insights for better management decisions. For over the last 5 years, he has been leading the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning section of different organizations. With an excellent academic background in Social Science and his...
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Prosonno Hasda

Monitoring & Evaluation Officer

Prosonno works as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at Truvalu Bangladesh. He helps to track the performance and evaluate the results of Truvalu

Global Team

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Jaap-Jan Verboom

Executive Director

Jaap-Jan is founder and executive director of Truvalu. Jaap-Jan started his career as an IT entrepreneur, after which he worked as a regional manager for ICCO in Central and East Africa. He started with Truvalu in 2014, initially under the name Agribusiness Booster, in partnership with ICCO and supported by a/o Woord & Daad and Argidius Foundation. In 2020 co-founders and supporters exited the company and fund and Jaap-Jan further continued the business. Jaap-Jan is a pioneer and combines entr...
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Maarten Hasselman

Investment Officer and Managing Director, Kenya

Maarten holds a Master in Global Business and Sustainability and has experience and interest in social venturing and impact investing. He is a hands-on conceptual thinker and with his analytical skills he loves to dive deep into business cases to understand the potential of a company.
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Andrés Jiménez

Managing Director, South America

Andres has more than 15 years of experience in implementing technical assistance in the areas of Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) development, as well as support of agriculture international negotiations, inclusive businesses and supporting government and community institutions.