3 Indians Develop Gen AI Model Helping Enterprises Meet Sustainability Goals

Green is good. And that’s more than just a cliche.

Various reports have revealed that sustainability is a key metric that companies and their customers want to track and care about. 

For instance, McKinsey reported that a significant chunk of customers in the United States are willing to pay higher prices for products with sustainable packaging. 

Then there's IBM which said that 80% of Indian businesses are on the lookout for hiring people who have deep knowledge in the sustainability domain.

It's clear that companies want to improve their green credentials and become sustainable units that do not harm the climate.

EcoRatings is a Delhi-based sustainability startup offering a breakthrough Generative Artificial Intelligence solution in the sustainability domain. It offers B2B companies and corporations a user-friendly chat interface that they can utilize to understand their competition benchmarks, assess how far or close they are to them, and make real-time decisions based on these learnings. 

While Gen AI isn't exactly new, EcoRatings is pioneering a Gen AI model focused specifically on sustainability.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

EcoRatings was started by Aditi Balbir, Aqeel Ahmed, and Shruti Anand in April 2023. 

While Aditi is a seasoned entrepreneur who has previously built a hospitality startup around building resorts in local communities, Shruti Anand has served as the Assistant Vice President at Brand Capital under the Times Group. Aqeel Ahmed, on the other hand, was the COO and founding team member at RateGain, a travel tech startup.

The trio met multiple times during their work and established a professional connection they could rely on. 

After Aditi sold her hospitality venture, she began assisting her friends in the United Nations. They were involved in projects around innovating carbon calculators.

When COVID-19 hit, Aditi Balbir realized that sustainability as an entire industry would soon become a necessity. 

Talking to Startup Pedia in an interview, she said, “I could see it becoming a growing sector. I spoke to Aqeel and Shruti about it and they were on board with the idea of designing something that could help companies improve their ESG  (Environmental, Social, Governance) goals.” 

This was how EcoRatings was born in 2023 

Aditi, Shruti, and Aqeel had a simple mission: to make sustainability easy for businesses and corporations.

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THE EcoRatings IMPACT 

The founders spent the whole of 2023 cracking the right tech for EcoRatings. 

They brought together a team of 25+ AI and Machine Learning coders who started building a Chat GPT-like model trained in all things sustainability.

Initially, one of the main challenges that EcoRatings grappled with was gathering data. Sustainability is a domain, where to date, a lot of companies simply do not have organized data. Multiple departments hold different fragments of the same data or the data is unstructured in the form of bills like electricity, water, etc., found at the factory level. 

The team recognized this problem and built a powerful solution around it. 

Aditi says, “EcoRatings has built sustaining.ai, an enterprise-focused platform. It offers real-time, accurate insights into ESG data.

“We wanted to solve the seemingly complex aspects of corporate sustainability - so we've kept this Gen AI model very, very simple to use,” she adds.

The main benefits of sustaining.ai are:

1. Sustaining.ai provides a deep dive into current practices, evident gaps, actionable insights, and tailored recommendations. This helps businesses figure out a sustainability strategy that works for them. 

2. Businesses can access ESG data, know exactly where their competition stands, and learn specific opportunities to build on sustainability initiatives. 

3. Carbon footprints can be easily tracked because the model is equipped with tracking data, even if it's located in fragmented sources across the organization. This will help decision-makers evaluate gaps to fill and make real-time decisions rooted in accurate knowledge about sustainability. 

4. Businesses can track their Scope 1,2, and 3 emissions and know the exact sources – whether from their supply chain, business travel, or manufacturing unit. 

5. Sustaining.ai can also help organizations meet their ESG goals by smoothing out their compliance management.

A simple way to understand how sustaining.ai works is by looking at some sample questions businesses can ask its user-friendly chat interface:

• How is my X competitor doing in carbon emissions?

• What can I do to make my supply chain sustainable?

• Which department in my company has the highest carbon footprint?

• How can I increase my ESG ratings?

• Calculate Scope 1 emissions of X hotel in Bangalore.
  

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LOOKING AHEAD

EcoRatings started selling its services to clients in India in April 2024.

While it's just been six months since they have become operational in the market, the founders are sure about the impact their Gen AI model will have.

Currently servicing 20+ clients in the manufacturing, food, personal hygiene, pharma, fashion, and health tech sectors, EcoRatings has expanded to a team of 25 AI ML coders and 5 support staff. 

EcoRatings raised a pre-seed funding round of one million dollars earlier this year.

Aditi says, “We are projecting a revenue of USD 2 million  next year..” 

EcoRatings is focused on continuously building its AI model, making it more valuable, and expanding to different geographies.

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