Lumity / What we're noticing

What we're noticing today in our domain

What the sector is talking about, with thoughts from us on why it matters. Gathered nightly, shortlisted & approved by us — never published unread.

8 notes · last updated 2026-08-17 · subscribe by RSS

Candidates are drawn from sector publications and news feeds against a fixed tag set, clustered by how many outlets carry the same story, and scored for relevance. A member of the team approves what publishes. Nothing appears here automatically.

Moving from value chain centric R&D to customer (and specific customer at that) centric in

Moving from value chain centric R&D to customer (and specific customer at that) centric innovation

Shiv SubramaniamDeeply embedded, and consistently practiced Customer-centric principles are the foundation for true organisational transformation. While Cathay Pacific Bank’s 20-year journey to true customer centricity has been game-changing, we believe the article has a few unasked questions, not unanswered ones. For instance: “I’ve always believed that if you take care of your customers and employees, the numbers will follow.” What was the earlier belief in the business? Why did you want to change it? How were the numbers when the earlier belief and practices were in play? What about it was enabling or disabling to the future of the business? Why did you think the answer lay only becoming customer-centric, and not say even more efficient? “Once we had done a lot of the infrastructure building, we needed a team that had the mindset to be able to say, “Hey, we want to take on this challenge.” I’m proud of the fact that we’ve got an environment that encourages them to do that.” What were the new beliefs that the infrastructure building happened around? How did the practice of identifying and hiring people change around that belief? How did the existing people react to the new mindset being developed, and what were the challenges? How did you manage to create that environment? “Our work with Nvidia is a good example of innovation. We’re collaborating with Nvidia on AI-agent protocols for financial services in Taiwan. These efforts don’t generate immediate returns, but they position us closer to where the industry is going and create a more engaging environment for our people.” Innovation is usually a mix of individual mindset and enabling environment. How did Cathay Pacific Bank create the right balance that enabled the Nvidia partnership? “The goal always is to hire the best people. But at our scale, with about 52,000 employees, the real challenge is putting the right people in the right roles, understanding their strengths and limitations, and building around that.” Couldn’t agree more. I’d love to know the thinking that was followed and the time it took to put the right people in the right roles. “At this scale, I don’t think you can assume you have all the answers. My role is to gather enough perspective to make the best decisions I can, and that only works if people are willing to speak honestly.” How does an organisation create a culture where people are willing to speak honestly? More importantly, why is it so hard for that to be the default operating culture in organisations? Questions that are not often asked, and even harder to address, are exactly the kind of questions that Cosmos practitioners contend with in every engagement – be it Business Entry, Transformation or Capability. Talk to us, anytime.

Collaborative: Everyone is unhappy

Good luck with finding 1 hour where everyone is available.

SumathyThe piece is for laughs but brings up deeper questions! Why is the social impact sector famous for its lack of collaboration? Most collaborations end even before they begin. In the for-profit world, it is usually a partnership rather than a collaboration, driven by one relatively clear goal — to maximise profit. In the non-profit world, the goal is not always that simple or aligned. When the goalpost is fuzzy and keeps shifting, collaborations can lose their focus and meaning. And when the glory — and often the credit — is shared, there may be little individual incentive to invest in making the collaboration work. One way to make collaborations work in the non profit world is to create specific credits for individual actors, while still acknowledging the shared glory of the outcomes.

The Unnamed Diagnosis: A framework for when capital and opportunity disconnect

Guest author Tasha Byers shares a new framework for when capital and opportunity disconnect in impact investments

AshThe fundamental disconnect here is investment thesis - they rely overwhelmingly on evidence, very infrequently on reasoning without evidence, and rarely, if ever on insight. The moment you weight the criterion inversely - insight highest, reasoning next, evidence as final, the problem disappears. This is especially true in social sector where most support is hardworking and systemic instead of smart and insightful.

Aid retrenchment is now structural, not a shock

G7 donors, who account for around three-quarters of all official development assistance, are set to cut aid spending by 28 per cent for 2026 against 2024 levels — the largest reduction since the G7 was formed in 1975. Charitable giving to international causes would need to more than double to close the gap.

Ashutosh TiwariPrivate and corporate giving is rising anyway, so the direction of travel is not new. But a non-profit executes what it is funded to execute. As money moves away from official development assistance, the pressure will be on non-profit outcomes to be integrated into the mainstream economy rather than run alongside it.

India's funding gap is widening even as giving grows

Social sector funding grew at 13 per cent CAGR to about ₹27 lakh crore by FY25, with public spending accounting for roughly 95 per cent — yet the gap against NITI Aayog norms stood near ₹16 lakh crore in FY25 and may reach ₹18 lakh crore by FY30. Private CSR remains concentrated among a small share of large family businesses and unevenly spread across states, leaving higher-poverty regions underfunded.

Ashutosh TiwariThere is no funding crunch. There is a crunch on quality capacity to absorb it. That points to two imperatives: more non-profits need to explore mergers, and more funders need to deploy towards the capacity and capability of non-profits rather than only towards programme design and execution.

The 10,000 FPO target is met — the harder question starts now

The Central Sector Scheme target of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations has been reached, with cumulative turnover of ₹20,358 crore as of 31 July 2026; 1,175 have been formed with entirely women members and women hold around 40 per cent of shareholdings. Against that, a 2026 NAAS policy paper points to small memberships limiting capital, infrastructure gaps in storage and processing, and weak governance.

Ashutosh TiwariFPOs need to move up the value-addition curve. The majority sit at aggregating inputs and basic outputs. A Lijjat Papad-style FPO, anyone?

AVPN comes to Delhi, 25–27 August

The thirteenth AVPN Global Conference is in India for the first time, at Bharat Mandapam, with over 2,000 delegates. Naina Subberwal Batra frames it against an annual SDG financing gap of well over a trillion dollars in Asia even as private wealth grows.

Ashutosh TiwariSocial investing still runs with social consciousness as the primary lever and capital returns as secondary. It might be more interesting to invert it. Take the world's top thousand ventures by return and identify those whose purpose already aligns with an SDG, even where they have not noticed. For the rest, build a returns theory of action for being socially conscious.

What franchising knows about the three-to-ten problem

A 2026 Multi-Unit Franchising Conference workshop named the "Hell Zone" — the phase where an operator is too big to run everything personally but not yet big enough to afford the infrastructure they know they need. The remedies discussed were mundane: standardised schedules, order timing, posting deadlines. Cadence that lets people know what to expect each week.

Ashutosh TiwariEvery non-profit scaling past its founder hits this exact wall, and often refuses to climb it — territorial ego keeps it framed as a leadership problem. Franchising treats it as a cadence problem. More usefully still, franchising and brand licensing are themselves powerful instruments for creating capacity and scaling without the chaos.

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