New Australian-backed support will help advance HIVE, Terratai’s 10-year initiative to build a resilient, nature-positive economy in Southeast Asia.
Bali, Indonesia. Terratai, Southeast Asia’s venture builder for nature, today announced support from two Australian partners, Minderoo Foundation and Investing in Women (IW), an initiative of the Australian Government. The support will advance HIVE (Holistic Investments in Vital Ecosystems), a 10-year initiative to build a stronger pipeline of investable, nature-positive businesses across Southeast Asia.
Minderoo Foundation, one of Australia’s largest philanthropic organisations, joins HIVE as an anchor partner to help grow businesses that protect and restore Southeast Asia’s forests, mangroves, and other critical ecosystems. IW, through its existing partnership with Terratai, is providing additional support to HIVE to strengthen its strategy by deepening its gender lens and enabling greater support for women-led ventures.
This partnership comes at a time when nature-positive businesses are emerging across Southeast Asia to address the urgent social, environmental and economic challenges created by biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and climate change.
Yet, for many nature-led businesses the critical investment and expertise needed to reach resiliency and profitability is difficult to access. These barriers are even steeper for businesses run by and benefiting women. Despite playing central roles across the farming, forestry, fisheries, and processing value chains that many nature-positive businesses depend on, women-led businesses in the region receive a disproportionately small share of investment capital.
Terratai’s HIVE strategy was created to help close these gaps. HIVE is a blended finance platform designed by Terratai to unlock capital for nature across Southeast Asia. It has two connected pillars: the Pipeline Builder, which uses philanthropic and concessional funds to provide early-stage, risk-tolerant finance and hands-on venture support to nature-led businesses; and the Investment Facility, which channels private investment into nature-positive companies ready to scale. Collectively these two pillars are designed to create a steady flow of investable enterprises, bridging the “missing middle” in nature finance and turning emerging opportunities into businesses that are credible, investable and scalable.
Both Minderoo and IW support backs Terratai’s HIVE Pipeline Builder. HIVE advances Minderoo’s work to deliver a climate-positive land sector transition, while protecting and restoring natural carbon sinks. IW’s partnership centres women’s participation, leadership, ownership, and access to capital within the HIVE strategy from the outset, strengthening women’s leadership, ownership, and access to capital across the HIVE pipeline. This reflects a shared view — and one central to Australia’s development priorities in Southeast Asia — that climate and nature-positive businesses are stronger, more resilient, and more likely to deliver lasting outcomes when women are part of how they are built, led, and financed.
Over the next decade, HIVE targets investments in 100 nature-positive ventures across Southeast Asia that aims to protect, restore, or improve management of 6 million hectares of critical ecosystems, and mobilise $200 million in new nature finance. These ambitions are designed to contribute to the broader global effort to conserve at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030 and reflect Australia’s growing role as a critical partner in the region’s nature and climate agenda.
Matt Leggett, Founder and CEO of Terratai, said: “Minderoo Foundation and Investing in Women’s support comes at a critical moment for Indonesia and the wider region, as biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation accelerate faster than conventional finance can respond. Their backing lets us fund the hard, unglamorous work of getting nature-positive businesses investment-ready, the step that determines whether capital actually translates into protected forests, restored mangroves, and thriving ecosystems on the ground.”
Holly Buschman, Executive Director of Natural Ecosystems at Minderoo Foundation, said: “Safeguarding healthy ecosystems for future generations will require an increase in the number, scale and impact of climate and nature positive businesses, and we want to see more of these next generation businesses women-led. The HIVE Pipeline Builder will deliver critical finance to bring these businesses to scale, and we’re proud to be funding Terratai and HIVE alongside Investing in Women and DFAT.”
Hannah Birdsey, CEO of Investing in Women, said: “Across Southeast Asia, Investing in Women has worked alongside investors and ecosystem players to strengthen gender lens investing. Our experience shows that businesses led by women can create strong opportunities for investors. We are pleased to support the HIVE initiative in helping nature-positive, women-led businesses access the capital and hands-on support they need to grow and attract commercial investment.”
For Terratai, the value of HIVE extends well beyond any single investment. Each HIVE venture supported is proving out something that didn’t exist before: a viable business model in an underserved market, a way to aggregate fragmented supply, a trusted data layer, or an investment structure others can replicate. Together, these models can turn venture-level innovation into measurable gains for biodiversity and ecosystem health, while making nature-positive investing increasingly repeatable at scale.
With anchor support now secured, Terratai is continuing to engage philanthropic, catalytic, and investment partners to help take HIVE to scale and direct more capital toward nature-positive businesses across Southeast Asia.
About Minderoo Foundation
Minderoo Foundation is an Australian philanthropy committed to building a bright future where people, communities and the environment we depend on can thrive. Minderoo focuses on backing community-led change, building a liveable future and keeping people safe as technology advances. It pursues change that lasts by addressing the underlying causes that hold back progress, and acts when urgent challenges arise, like humanitarian crises and natural disasters. Minderoo drives change by working alongside those closest to the challenge, advocating for reform, building evidence for what works and developing solutions when none exist.
About Investing in Women
Investing in Women (IW) is an Australian Government initiative to accelerate women’s economic equality and promote inclusive economic growth across Southeast Asia. Through partnerships with diverse stakeholders, we support women to thrive in the workplace and succeed in business.
Building on the results, partnerships and lessons achieved since 2016, IW works with business leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, advocates and policymakers to remove barriers to women’s full economic participation in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, and, to a limited extent, Myanmar. IW harnesses the capacity of the private sector, from large enterprises to small-to-medium business, to drive gender equality.
About Terratai
Terratai is Southeast Asia’s venture builder for nature. Based in Indonesia and operating across Southeast Asia, Terratai works with early-stage businesses developing solutions for nature, biodiversity, food systems, and climate. Through its HIVE platform, Terratai combines venture building, working capital, and growth-stage investment to help nature-positive businesses become investable, scalable, and positioned for long-term impact.
Media Contacts
Naimmah Nur Aini
Communications and Engagement Officer
Terratai
naimmah@terratai.com
Rachael Barbas
Advocacy & Engagement
Minderoo Foundation
rbarbas@minderoo.org