Startup Mantra: Counting the green numbers
Sprih has become one of the early movers in helping businesses measure, report and devise strategies for sustainability
Pune: Sustainability, green tech, carbon dioxide, water, plastic, waste…. all these are just words unless they get translated into action. And while everyone and even the government authorities have begun acting on becoming “green”, it is easier said than done. Particularly for a corporate body that has far too many factors to look into to achieve a net zero status that the government aims to reach by 2070. While there is no single law that mandates specific actions towards this goal, the government via its existing laws and policies like the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act 2022, is helping companies move towards carbon credit trading.
But how is a corporate body to even know that it is carbon negative or positive? How does it calculate the emissions its factories emit, the energy its air conditioning uses, the fuel its company buses use, the plastic waste, its discarded laptops’ load on our planet?
The question that was to become the problem statement of the company — Sprih — four friends founded was somewhere in the back of their minds when they first met at a sapling plantation event organised by an NGO 14 Trees. Akash Keshav, Rohit Toshniwal, Hemant Joshi and Ravi Singhal met on a Sunday to plant saplings that led to the question – how can a company calculate its carbon emissions? How can they devise a plan towards becoming sustainable?
Casual conversations became deeper when the four realised that there was a need for companies to know how to calculate where they are on the carbon map and how to get to becoming a “green” company.
Akash said, “We saw that there was nothing available really. Add to that was the declaration of the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Regulation (BRSR), 2021 that mandated listed Indian companies to file sustainability report in a standardised format.
“Besides the BRSR, there was growing pressure from across the globe where sustainability mandates were set across supply chains. Doing business internationally now meant becoming a sustainable company. But businesses across the country were struggling to navigate the complexities of sustainability management. They lacked an efficient method for goal setting, drafting a clear strategy and then executing them. All this in addition to stringent compliance regulations with the BRSR and ever-increasing expectations of consumers and investors. We noticed that most organisations found it daunting to measure, track, and manage their carbon emissions, water usage, and waste footprints—especially across complex supply chains.”
This was a problem desperately seeking a solution that they observed. Now they had to devise a solution.
“Since the four of us came from strong tech backgrounds (Akash was with Arista Networks, Hemant had already led multiple ventures to success, Rohit had founded Arkin Networks that built software for data centre management, and was later acquired by VMware, and Ravi was a founding engineer at Arkin Networks) and had built solutions for the global market, we knew that there was an opportunity to leverage our knowledge and design a software solution for future sustainability needs,” said Akash.
“The government every year publishes an “Emissions Factor” (EF) on how much emission a certain activity emits. This changes every year. So, if you consume one unit of electricity now, it has an EF of 0.71 kg CO₂e/kWh (carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per unit of energy produced). Two years ago, it was 0.92 kg CO₂e/kWh. This is because our country’s energy mix keeps changing with solar, wind power being added, with thermal stations becoming more efficient and so on,” he said.
The energy consumption across different activities is known. What was unclear for businesses was how much they were emitting. Akash said, “To work on creating a report and setting a goal, we needed a methodology to accurately measure and contextualise the emissions happening due to hundreds of different activities. In a company this is so vast and also scattered across geographies, activities, how would one calculate, say, the difference in emissions produced by an executive flying business class or economy? The emissions of driving to the office in her car or taking a bus? How to calculate the environmental impact of air conditioning on a whole floor, or exhaust fans in a factory? There are too many data points to consider while arriving at a number.”
Building a solution
It was clear to all of them that the problem was begging for a solution. The four of them spent a year to split hairs about all aspects related to working out the numbers, preparing a report and drafting a strategy to help companies in the sustainability goals. Akash said, “We worked on this for a year from 2022 and by early 2023 we had a MVP (minimum viable product) ready.
“The way we looked at it was – to arrive at a number for emissions we needed the historical data of all operational activities, for various products and services. So, the electricity bills will indicate the units of power used, fuel bills will help us arrive at the quantity of petrol, diesel used. All travel tickets indicated miles or km travelled by the company’s staff. All this data is either physically recorded or stored in their ERP (enterprise resource planning) system.
“Then comes the calculation of emissions. Carbon dioxide is not a particulate emission, but that which is spewed from factory chimneys (NOx and SOx) is among many others. That was not too much of an issue for us as the Pollution Control Board monitors this number for each and every factory. But the other type of GHG (greenhouse gases) emission called operational emission was one where we had to calculate. Globally there are more than 80,000 EFs for carbon alone!”
Akash said, “Say one is driving a diesel car versus a petrol one. The EF will be different for both. If you are travelling business class, then you are occupying the space for two maybe three persons so the EF is not the same even though you have boarded the same flight. With regards to electricity, the source of it changes the EF. So, wind and solar have zero EF but manufacturing solar panels or thermal energy is different. Sustainability is not a push button that a business can push and become sustainable. It is very fragmented. Moreover, companies in Europe and even some states in the US have mandated that even the suppliers be a green company. India is a major exporter of IT and automotive to the world. This we think is a good time for businesses to take this opportunity and make sustainability a part of their overall business strategy.”
When they had their prototype ready, they were prepared to take it out into the world to companies who were looking to turn their sustainability vision into a reality. Akash said, “And we met with Hemant Jalan of Indigo Paints and offered to help them calculate their emissions and be part of their sustainability journey. And in February 2023, we began work with Indigo Paints and Info Beans (an IT company) as well.” Sounds rather easy. Develop your MVP, meet a prospective customer, offer your service and they agree?
It was a need that didn’t have many people serving it that worked in favour of Sprih. Akash said, “Well they did because they needed to get a fix on their sustainability issue and didn’t have a clear idea on how to go about it. Instead of putting our product first, we said we’ll solve your problem. They were impressed with our work and even started recommending us to others. We kept developing as we delivered the service for them. In fact, I would say they were our early design partners as in those early days we did some of the problems manually and some digitally and the product evolved and got refined with this experience.”
Sprih first assessed the environmental impact of its early customers, then benchmarked it against industry peers and made recommendations. This is where they made arrangements with some other ecosystem partners (solar, wind, tree plantation water etc) who can pitch in to help a business reach its sustainability goals.
So, what does the Sprih platform do? According to Akash, “it is an AI native sustainability platform that helps businesses effectively and intelligently manage their environmental impact. With this, a company can assess and understand the environmental impact they have, whether through energy consumption, production processes, or supply chain activities.”
It starts first with measurement of all emissions that impact the environment footprint of a company. The platform calculates the company’s carbon emissions, water usage, and waste footprint, providing a holistic view of environmental impact across all facets of the business, including factories, offices, and supply chains.
Then it collates the performance of industry peers and helps a business identify its position vis-a-vis the industry and use the info to establish realistic, competitive and sustainable goals. Akash said, “Our platform offers actionable insights to implement effective initiatives for reducing their environmental impact, such as adopting cleaner energy sources, minimising waste, or collaborating with eco-friendly suppliers.
“The other very important issue is compliance. Regulatory requirements can be very complex. We automate data tracking and reporting and provide audit-ready data that is aligned with local and global laws. We simplify the compliance issue for a business.
“In addition to this, Sprih also allows for secure collaboration with ecosystem partners, facilitating knowledge-sharing and co-innovation to create sustainable solutions. Our mission is to simplify sustainability management, making it both actionable and impactful.”
Competition
“Since the concept itself is rather new, there aren’t too many players in the field. Moreover, businesses became aware of the environmental impact just a few years ago as climate change drove policies globally. So, our competitors (like Persefoni, Watershed, Sweep, and StepChange) are also in the same boat as us, trying to make a real impact by helping their customers reach their sustainability goals.
“There are some companies that still do this assessment and calculation manually, but technology always succeeds since it can be scalable quickly and easily. A human can go only so far calculating numbers month by month, year on year? And software just needs numbers to be fed in,” he said.
While working on calculating emission numbers for these first few clients, the platform kept evolving—adapting each day to better understand their needs and expectations. Akash said, “We did get a lot of inputs from these companies that helped us make our product what it is today.”
Money
In the year of deliberation and development of their platform, Sprih needed to raise funds which they did in a seed funding round by Leo Capital of $3 million. This capital they will deploy “to developing more sustainability-centric AI models to accelerate sustainability actions. We are also building the world’s largest sustainability database using AI. We will also deploy this fund to attract talent, and towards sales and marketing activities to accelerate our global expansion efforts.”
Future plans
Since technology has shrunk the world, like most startups they eye the global market. Akash said, “On the business front, there is a strong focus on global sales expansion especially in key markets like the US, Europe and the Middle East where the demand for sustainability solutions continues to grow. We aim to continually enhance our platform’s capabilities, build strategic partnerships, and increase brand awareness.
By pursuing these goals, we aim to make sustainability more accessible and actionable for businesses worldwide.”
In the one year that they have been operational, Sprih has served over 20 companies globally. And while this number spells success it does more than that, it’s proof that businesses are now taking the environmental needs into consideration. Phew!