With more than 70 countries around the world having pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, a growing number of organizations are committing to ESG reporting. But over 90 percent of companies are unable to comprehensively measure their emissions – especially indirect supply chain emissions (Scope 3) – which makes accurate reporting near impossible.
That’s where Singapore-based startup Terrascope comes in. The carbon measurement and management software as a service platform allows companies to reliably measure their emissions across their business, supply chain and portfolio.
“Most companies are at the very beginning of their journey when it comes to planning their path to net zero emissions,” Terrascope CEO Maya Hari tells The CEO Magazine.
“Terrascope starts at the very first step of the journey, which is accurately measuring emissions. But even to get to that stage of enterprise-grade, trustable, scalable, repeatable measurement is a journey in itself. It involves understanding a lot of the data you have within your organization and turning that into the equivalent of emissions.
“The very heart of Terrascope is bringing the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed this process up. It’s the first step in achieving Terrascope’s vision, which is ultimately to be an end-to-end decarbonization platform.”
Net Zero Future
Beyond the lofty goal of saving the planet, committing to net zero is also critical for a business’s bottom line and longevity. “More and more companies are starting to realize how the impacts of climate change are beginning to affect their supply chains,” Hari reveals.
“Decarbonization is the right answer for every company because it’s the right thing for business. It’s a multi-decade journey that companies have to go on and, the sooner they understand that, the better.
“In the last couple of years, I’ve seen a very interesting change from companies not really looking at decarbonization from a pragmatic lens to starting to understand the connection between emissions and business risk.
“At Terrascope, we hope to be able to connect carbon risks to financial risks in a more direct way in the future, especially as more countries use a carbon tax.”
The desire to bring together profit and purpose is what led Hari to Terrascope in early 2022 after working for tech giants including Twitter, Google and Microsoft.
“The last three or four years have been a very clear indicator that the largest problems to solve lay in the world of climate,” she points out. “I went through a personal transformation in really thinking about where I wanted to spend the rest of my career and climate technology is where I landed.”
Ambitious Vision
In the next five years, Hari plans to tirelessly pursue Terrascope’s vision of becoming a world-leading decarbonization platform.
“Our customers’ CEOs, chief sustainability officers and stakeholders will come and go every few years, whereas the decarbonization journey will be a multi-decade one that may even go past the 2050 timeline,” she says.
“In the long run, I see Terrascope as being that technology fabric inside a company that can protect the journey and intellectual property of what has been tried to decarbonize, what has worked and what hasn’t, and all that rich data gets captured.
“Our DNA is to be global and to serve as many of the largest companies around the world as we can. There’s a lot of work to do in the next few years to make our vision come alive.”
Terrascope is currently enhancing its platform’s measurement capabilities and working towards supporting its customers in reaching their net zero goals.
“The next step is to develop our management capabilities to help our customers model their path to net zero,” Hari explains. “That’s a product that will play out in short order.”
To achieve a global reach, the climate tech startup also plans to build teams around the world. “We’re going to be very much focused on foreign geography in the near term,” Hari says. “We’re deeply thinking about Japan in the next year, as well as the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, and then Australia and New Zealand.
“If we can do justice to these geographies over the next few years, we will have done our job well in taking a strong technology platform and AI capabilities to solve the most complicated supply chain emissions measurement and management issues and really bringing that to life in different markets.”
Fast Facts
- Terrascope provides Greenhouse Gas Protocol compliant, fully verifiable and auditable emissions data.
- Terrascope was built in partnership with BCG Digital Ventures and is backed by Olam Ventures.
- Hari is also an early stage angel investor and advisor to startups. She helps them with scaling strategy, product go-to-market and market expansion.
- Hari was previously the Vice President of Global Strategy & Operations for Twitter.
It Takes a Village
But Hari knows Terrascope needs strong partners to achieve its ambitions. “Trying to do this alone would be a disservice to the world and to the problem we have to solve,” she explains. “So, we’re very focused on assembling the right set of collaborators who can help pinpoint parts of this journey.
“It might be banks that can do green financing or sustainability and environmental consultants who can go on the ground and help change the behavior of the companies we’re working with. It might even be pure reporting platforms that can take the structural detail of emissions reporting that comes out of our platform and report it with other ESG metrics for the company.
“We’re constantly thinking about what the right partner mix is because we know we can’t do this alone. I always say it takes a village to decarbonize even a single enterprise.”
The CEO also believes a strong leadership team is key to Terrascope’s success. “My leadership style tends to be very collaborative or participative, so there’s a big onus on assembling the right kind of leaders around me who can feel empowered and who can also disagree with me when needed,” she says.
“One of my favorite things that both energizes and vexes people that work with me is to say, ‘Dream without constraints.’ Ambition and thinking about the largest canvas you can paint is something that is ingrained in my leadership style. That often means that people who come on the journey with me as leaders inherit large ambitions and goals.”
As a member of global leadership community, YPO, for the past four years, Hari has unwavering support from her peers as she leads Terrascope into the future.
“YPO has been a fascinating community,” she says. “I get tremendous value out of being in a group that is accomplished and yet able to be very vulnerable with each other about their experiences as leaders.
“It’s very enriching on both a local and a global level. I think it’s fascinating that I could drop into any city in the world and there would be a very high-quality group of people that would be willing to spend time nurturing the work the community is doing for each other. I’m very grateful.”
