Tell us about Envaluate.
Envaluate enables you to login to your bank securely, track your carbon footprint and lead a greener life. Our technology leverages open banking and our unique carbon models to estimate the environmental impact of each transaction made. We then provide users personalised metrics and tips to reduce their carbon footprint.
Our mission is to empower people with the data they need to gain a holistic understanding of their environmental impact, vote with their £’s and lead a greener life. We envision (and hope) that carbon emissions to become a significant in decision making, in a similar way to price.
Why did you join the Barclays Black Founder Accelerator?
Building partnerships with retail banks is fundamental for us at Envaluate. This will allow to integrate our API’s into their mobile banking apps. This means we can provide carbon footprint data to a wider audience of customers, helping more people to engage with climate issues and inspire real change.
Through joining this accelerator we're excited to be able to widen our network within the retail banking and Fintech space. Joining an accelerator at one of the UK's largest retail banks and a bank committed to innovation in the Fintech space will help us to ensure that we are truly aligned with providing the best solution for our banking customers. We're also excited to meet like-minded black founders in the tech world.
What would be your desired outcome from this programme?
Our goal is to launch a pilot with Barclays users for our carbon footprint technology. We would like to use the network to build relationships with the main stakeholders within Barclays (such as retail banking, digital product, and sustainability leads) to identify the main KPIs we would need to hit, better understand the sales cycle and consider how we can fit in to the bank's wider sustainability strategy. We would also like to pin down our revenue model whilst on the programme and find mentors and advisors who are aligned with our mission and have a good understanding of the Fintech space.
Which entrepreneur inspires you the most and why?
Ismail Ahmed, founder of WorldRemit, used a problem close to his heart to help build a company revolutionising the remittances industry; an industry at the heart of the economy of developing countries. After whistleblowing fraud at the UN and losing his job, he took the UN to court and received a payout which he used to start WorldRemit. His ethics before and during his life of entrepreneurship and his vision of helping people use tech to help improve the lives of people they care about are truly inspirational.
What has been your biggest win in your entrepreneurial journey?
In early September, we were accepted on to the Bethnal Green Ventures Tech for Good program and received an investment. The investment and our participation in their accelerator has helped us kick-start our business, produced interest from investors and given us access to a network of mentors and resources.
And your biggest challenge?
There are limitations to using Open Banking to estimate carbon footprints. The current information we get from each transaction does not tell us exactly what items you have purchased. We calculate everything on a CO2/£ basis, which puts focus on your lifestyle habits (e.g. eating out and how you travel) and where you spend (increasing the pressure on companies to be more sustainable). In the medium/long term future, we will tackle how to unlock product level data from companies, to increase the accuracy of our model estimations.
