Tony Zayas 0:04
Hey, everybody, welcome to the tech founders show. Andy, how the heck are you doing?

Andy Halko 0:10
I am fantastic. Back from a long weekend. Spending hard labor out in the yard. How about you, Tony?

Tony Zayas 0:18
Yeah, some of the same going on over here, but got to enjoy a nice some nice weekend and raise morial day. Yeah, so that was all good. We have another tech founder here this week, we have Aadith Moorthy, he is the CEO and founder of CONSERWATER. And CONSERWATER is building the food to see marketplace. It’s the world’s first international soil carbon offset market. It’s enabled by AI. And let me bring them on so they can tell us all about it. Aadith, how you doing today? Doing great. Doing great. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining in. First of all, before we get started, just tell us a little bit more about console water.

Aadith Moorthy 0:30
Yeah, so at console water, we are building the world’s first truly international soil carbon offset marketplace. So what that means is, we’re providing corporations and governments the opportunity to buy carbon removal, removing co2 from the atmosphere, at the lowest cost, while helping farmers around the world to increase soil carbon, sequestering co2 from the atmosphere effectively, but also improving their livelihoods, they are able to increase their incomes. And they’re able to grow more with less in the future from doing that. So according to the UN, according to the UN, IPCC, soil carbon, storing carbon in the soils, the world is one of the lowest cost now I want the largest ways to remove co2 from the atmosphere. And we are enabling it through our technology, it historically, it’s been very hard to do, because it’s been very hard to quantify things, measure things on the ground. And now we’re able to use satellites along with AI to measure soil carbon directly. And by doing that, we’re able to enable this to happen on a global scale, and enable carbon removal to actually be unlocked, measured and unlocked on a global scale in this way, and bring both the corporations who want carbon removal, and the farmers were able to provide it at low cost. And you might have seen from the news, there’s ESG is all the world right now. And a lot of companies are focusing a lot on your carbon footprint, and environmental justice, social justice, all those aspects. And we bring it all together and enabling that to happen was while helping the planet.

Andy Halko 2:52
Wow, that’s pretty amazing. I’m kind of curious. How did you how did you even get into this? And you know, what’s your story?

Aadith Moorthy 3:03
Yeah, so it’s actually started out a few years ago, back in 2016. Actually, I was traveling to a small village actually in the South India, Australian to a small village in South India. And I saw a funeral procession, a farming family had committed suicide. I because that year, the monsoon rains had failed. And as a result, the crop yields had collapsed. And that got me thinking due to due to climate change, there’s a lot of things happening. But of course, first off, the farmers are really suffering. Why do they need to struggle like this in the face of climate change? And why would they need to lose their lives like this? Due to the increasing droughts that are occurring and increasing flooding as well? that’s occurring, or increasing wildfires here in California? What Why? Why are farmers struggling? Is there anything that they can do to fight back against that? And that’s how we started but it didn’t start on the on the carbon sequestration side first. So we started on the start on the water side, which is why our name is CONSERWATER, and helping farmers to grow more with less water. And in fact that here’s a latest scoop for your listeners, I guess is we are we are in the process of actually rebranding and changing our name to boo Mitra boo Mitra, that means a friend of the earth insanity. So we are in the process of changing your name in sync with a huge funding round when we’re almost closing in like the next and next few weeks. So, so that so we are in a inflection point ourselves. But so far, you know, like we started out on the water side. We we’ve been helping 1000 farmers, then we kind of shifted the business model to helping accelerate carbon removal using the same kinds of technology and the where are we headed. Sustainability broadly and enabling large scale carbon removal and large scale ecosystem restoration in large scale sustainability? around the world? That’s what we stand for this are we trying to do?

Andy Halko 5:18
So many things to talk about and unpack? I’m kind of curious, what drove the shift from the focus on water to carbon? And how you went through that evolution of change?

Aadith Moorthy 5:31
Yeah, yeah. So it. So we start out on the water site, right. And we built that for a while. But from the beginning, like, as a founder, my vision has always been, how do we get to the 100 million farmers of the world? How do we get to all the farmers? How do we get to a really, really large scale? And what is the best ways to do that? What is the best ways to achieve scale? I guess I’m starting to just sound like a typical Silicon Valley person now. But really like this is this is this is the vision, how do you reach scale? How do you reach scale around the world? And, and that is an interesting question to think about. And we ended up basically, we’ve been studying it for a while, and how do we do that. And we’ve tried a variety of different things, a variety of different business models, a variety of different go to market strategies. And I’ll do that and with the water product, we manage fish, like a few 1000 farmers around the world, there are using it across all the inhabited continents. But then what we quickly realize is that the growth trajectory is only linear. Is there any way that we can kind of get that j curve going? Or at least an S curve until we reach many millions read. So that’s what it’s what we need. That’s what startups need. That’s how you build a fast growing startup. So how do we do that? And that’s when we started thinking about different models and discharging what how we can really drive both the business objectives while driving sustainability objectives while really scaling, and that’s where the carbon model comes in. So the carbon model is where we’re able to easily shift into that, because we add the key technologies already from what we’ve been developing from water, which is actually quite related to carbon actually turns out scientifically, so they’re, the key technologies are already there, the key software is already there. And the key partners in the key, the key sales channels, and the key partners are already there on the ground, doing things from from this point of view, and we just shipped them to a slightly different model with the carbon. And, and we did that and we, we we, I guess it’s still a work in progress. It is not 100%, all of the parties are not completely transitioned to the new model yet. But we have been able to do that. And because there’s so much overlap in what we’re doing before, but then in this model, the entire business model has shifted. That’s the benefit. So it goes back to what I was saying earlier about how we reach the 100 million farmers the world. We believe the easiest way to bring technology to the 100 million farmers the world advanced technology is actually by paying them incentivizing them to do the right thing. And, and that there’s a huge interest. Now in carbon removal, there’s a huge interest in withdrawing emissions from the atmosphere. Avoiding and offsetting and removing co2 from the atmosphere is a huge interest. We have to capitalize on that, which is actually $100 billion dollar worth of interest globally, carbon is being created at that level already. And of course, it’s going to go bigger, because we all we’re all very worried about how do we actually reduce climate change and stop contributing to the problem. So it’s going to go bigger, as huge demand as a huge number of farmers out there that were able to scale to faster than ever, because of the shift in business model where we’re able to incentivize them and enable them to do better without charging them monetarily because they’re being paid through the carbon credits. And then we facilitate all this. And we make, we obviously make a commission off the transactions on the actual creation and generation and sale of carbon credits. That’s why it’s sort of like a marketplace. But we are enabling this entire thing. And we’re enabling large scale climate action.

Tony Zayas 9:26
So I’ll be able to explain a little bit of the technology that you guys use and like how you’re what you’re doing, just to simplify it a bit,

Aadith Moorthy 9:38
right? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So the conventional way of measuring things on earth on the planet, is usually to go do a soil sample are some sample of a plant sample or something of that sample, and send it to a local lab and get it tested in a lab. That is a typical way to measure environmental outcomes. As a typical way that that soil properties, and many plant properties are usually measured, what we are doing is we are able to use satellites, satellites throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum. And what that means is things that we can see visible light, infrared light. microwaves, wavelengths, like what your phone uses to communicate radar, what the weather stations used to measure rain, all those all those wave things, there are satellites that measure all those things, be able to use those kinds of satellites throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum, both public and private satellites, and then study the earth, measure what is happening from the earth. But then, of course, what a satellite sees is sort of like what your camera on your phone sees, it only sees a count of the pixels, it only sees the count of the brightness of the pixels measured on each pixel on your camera, right? Same thing is measured by satellite, it’s a raw number, you’re able to use AI to convert that raw number into actionable information, converting the raw numbers or what the satellite see into actionable information about things that are relevant to understand about about the earth, be it soil carbon levels, in our case with carbon, we have a measuring soil carbon levels on on every single field to a within a 10 meter 30 feet resolution, we’re able to measure that, and then use that information to then go back and, and quantify how soil carbon is increasing over time, as farmers sequester co2 from the atmosphere. And that increase in soil carbon, that’s co2 sequestration, carbon removal. So we’re able to turn that increase in carbon into a certified carbon credit to relevant international standards, and then sell that. So the technology really is the ability to quantify that and to quantify and quantify not just soil carbon, soil moisture and other nutrients as well, which we do, but quantify these environmental variables to a high enough degree of accuracy, to enable both the farmers to grow more with less, and also to enable increase in soil carbon driving climate action. And, and driving co2 removal, or carbon removal from the atmosphere and achieving these environmental outcomes. That’s all possible with our kind of general purpose kind of technology to measure these environmental outcomes from the earth.

Tony Zayas 12:40
Very cool. It doesn’t sound like this is something that started as like a side hustle. I would be curious to hear what your professional background was, you know, before you dove into this?

Aadith Moorthy 12:54
Well, okay, so it did actually say I started a site as I would say it, it actually started as a side hustle. So yeah, so I actually founded this power this company, due when I was initially founded in 2016, when I was still in undergrad, actually, in college. So So I, I graduated from the California Institute of Technology, with the double major in material science and computer science, the concentration in AI. So I came from the AI background and, and also you might be knowing that Caltech Calvary Institute technology, you might have heard about it from Big Bang Theory, I guess it’s where most people have seen it. But they also manage JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is where all the satellites for NASA are designed and run from, there’s a lot of satellite stuff going on. There’s a lot of AI stuff. But then what, where, where this got interesting to me is from the story I told you earlier about traveling in India, and and then I put this all together, and then we started working. And of course, it started initially as a side hustle. It did start as a side hustle. So since then, happily, it has grown, and has grown to, as I said, even from the initial water angle from giving helping farmers grow more with less water. If we had grown to 1000s of farmers, that’s when I decided let’s rethink what’s going on here. How can we actually reach 100 million, not just 1000s, 100 million, we shifted the business model. And now as I mentioned to you, we are we are pretty much closing a funding round the next one week or one and a half weeks. And stay tuned for the news on that as well.

Andy Halko 14:39
I’m curious how you bridge the gap. So you know, you obviously had some connection to AI and technology related to satellites and you have this idea after traveling, you know, related to water and carbon. So how do you bridge that gap? Did you need to bring in experts from different you know, disciplines to help understand how you can take AI and actually, you know, analyze data and utilize that, that information to then produce outcomes, or was it something that you did the research and, and had to, you know, bridge that gap yourself?

Aadith Moorthy 15:19
Yeah, that’s it’s a good question. So it’s, it’s, it’s not been a very linear journey, I guess from its most startups it’s not, it’s usually not a linear journey. It’s a weird zigzag motion. But in our case, in our case, we really benefited from the kinds of partners that we’ve built up over time, and the network of partners that we as a company have developed. So those partners working alongside, so we primarily work through partners and ground partners, and those partners, going alongside his partners has contributed extensively to our own knowledge. And of course, also helps them to grow their knowledge, and helps us to reach more farmers and understand what’s going on with more lands, more reach around the world. So it’s been really enabled by the partners and the partnerships. And in going back to the point that you mentioned about the technology, certain, certain pieces of how things work. And how things are finally put together, have been literally inspired by by talking directly to farmers, and also talking to the partners who work with the farmers. There’s many things that are directly many features, many ways in which the technology works, many different aspects, end up being directly. So this goes back to your typical customer discovery in a startup, I guess. But here, it’s customer discovery both directly with farmers. And also also in certain cases, intermediated, by large scale partners who can reach large numbers of farmers faster. But basically, going back to your point, that all goes back into developing technology and enabling us to come up with the right kind of technology that can actually scale and can actually work in these kinds of contexts. It all goes back to the customer, most important person.

Andy Halko 17:15
Now, in this type of, you know, technology business, was there an MVP, something that you were able to take out and, you know, validate the marketplace with?

Aadith Moorthy 17:28
Yes, yeah. So, so that that’s what So, of course, it’s been a very nonlinear journey, as I said, but here’s here’s how we initially initially started, MBP was, was a very basic smartphone app that gave very basic, very basic information to the end user on how much they need to water your plants on any given day. Very, very basic. So that was the very, very initial MVP. We got, we got hundreds, several hundreds of users, but we kind of got stuck there. Because we soon learned that, that it’s not possible to build this scaling kind of thing with, with the farmers and throughout the world. So it’s hard to scale, like Snapchat or Facebook, in these kinds of situations, kind of obviously, I guess, but back then, you know, like I was, I was a naive, late teenager, I’d say. And as a result, we believe that we could make it go viral. I just like that. And that did not happen. So should that’s how we started. What do you learned a lot from human that initial experiment from, from the several hundreds of people who actually use the app, we learned a lot, went back, great and more refined product reached more folks built more partnerships. I use those partnerships to reach even more farmers and even more end users. And then now of course, we’re transitioning those partnerships to carbon model. And that has enabled us actually to reach all the way from where you are with us to hundreds of users all the way to 3 million acres of factual factual land producing carbon credits and or otherwise, and probably another, like several, several 100 1000s of acres using consorted directly. So so so that it’s been a nonlinear journey. And I guess, like most startups are not completely linear and very simple to understand. So it’s been nonlinear. It’s been a lot of learning, some pivoting here and there. But right now, probably we’re at that place where things are starting to make sense. And we’re able to actually navigate and try to build something that goes beyond just 1000s of users, but to hundreds of 1000s and millions right now we are actually in the process of finishing up recruiting like 100,000 farmers in a few different geographies. So so that is that As a trajectory, we want to be able to scale. And MVP, obviously very important to doing that. But then, since the nonlinear story, the MVP taught us some things, then the next iteration thought is more things. next iteration, tell us even more things keeps going to work, right? Yeah. Yeah,

Andy Halko 20:18
I’m kind of curious if we could ever expand into the residential market that, you know, people that have home gardens, or is there just not enough of a carbon offset, to really allow that to be sold?

Aadith Moorthy 20:33
Well, yeah, well, some people you know, they like to do those kinds of things, just because they want to do something good for the planet, of course, like from the point of view of being producing a scalable carbon sequestration. Probably there isn’t as much allowance out there. But then of course, there are some folks were very passionate about this stuff and are interested in doing Yeah, so. So it same things can be applied to the car at home market, but it’s not necessarily like, we don’t need to necessarily sell it to a third party beyond there. It’s for your own. It’s for your own interest in sequestering co2. So that Yeah, there is there is potential there as well. Yes. Yeah. At the moment, we’re more focused on unlocking large scale carbon and unlocking like mega ton today, and future gigaton scale carbon one. So that’s our context. We could be removing 20% of the world’s sea of the of the humanity’s yearly co2 emission every year from the atmosphere. That’s nine Giga tons. We want to reach gigaton scale in the next few years. Today, we are on the megaton scale. And that will enable us to really move the needle on climate change.

Tony Zayas 21:49
Sure, stress relief. So it sounds like you You raise some funding.

Aadith Moorthy 21:55
Yes. Yes, that’s, that’s happening right now. So technically, we just like finalizing how things are happening with the fundraise, in terms of the actual implementation. But we that is happening right now. And we’re going to announce it announced that funding round probably in the next week, or week and a half. So stay tuned for news.

Tony Zayas 22:17
Yeah, that’s exciting. So congrats. I was curious, what was it like pitching? I mean, this is a combat complex solution, solving big important challenges in the world. What was that like? pitching the solution? How was it received? What was the approach?

Aadith Moorthy 22:35
What did Yeah, yeah. So I guess, what I’ve found at least is, make sure that you’re pitching to the right person, I guess it’s generally true for every single startup, every single concept, every single idea, you don’t want to be pitching to someone who’s not necessarily, you don’t want to be pitching to a partner to VC who is not actually in your field, and then it’s just going to stall with that person. Right. So So you got to find the right people to pitch to, and then pitch them correctly. But luckily, you know, like, right now, there’s growing interest, again, in climate tech, might have heard climate tech thrown around quite a bit, is there’s a, there’s a growing interest in climate tech, in finding solutions for the climate. And that’s what we do, and that we do it quite directly. So there’s, there’s a growing interest in that, obviously, that said, again, like our there is some added complexity in our system, because we have this technological element that, that a lot of lot of typical VCs, they don’t have the ability to actually evaluate the technology directly. It’s very hard for them. So so so then we we did have to pitch quite a bit, right. We did this, like how you hear from all the Silicon Valley stories, I pitched 100 PCs or something like okay, I probably didn’t pitch 100 exactly, would probably like close up to their eye in terms of total VCs pitch in the process. So yeah, it’s a, there’s a lot of pitching you need to do. But again, I feel that if you just pitch to the right person, it will it will work out correctly. And then of course, there’s also a timing aspect, right, you didn’t do the right person at the right time. Luckily, as I said, this is the time right now, where people are actually interested in the climate tech, and in finding solutions to help the planet. So timing is good. And once you pick the right person, that is the way to go. And that is what we’ve been doing. But of course, you know, like due to COVID it’s been really, really hard to network and to finding the right people to pitch to. But luckily, we have been able to and luckily even even cold mails are probably better received right now during COVID than they ever were because people are receptive to hearing from other folks out there.

Andy Halko 25:00
Speaking that well, how did did COVID affect your business? And you know, just generally, you know, how do you tend to handle big sweeping impacts that are, you know, out of your control?

Aadith Moorthy 25:16
Yeah, so we usually try to adapt and adapt in the right ways in adapting the best ways. In our case, you know, the pivot to the pivot to carbon, the pivot to carbon removal. It happened directly during the beginning of COVID. So we did that is when we kind of had a chance to like, so there’s as much travel anymore in there and everyone’s at home. Right. So there’s, there’s a longer time to introspect and see what is going on. Where are we today? I guess many companies did that, probably during the same period as us. And, of course, some companies, they ran out of money, unfortunately. But others, like others, definitely pivoted, and made it to a cleaner place. So that’s what we’ve been trying to do. So we have, it is probably directly influenced by COVID. Probably, of course, you can’t do a counterfactual analysis, probably COVID has a strong influence in us. Shifting our business model is that’s when we really sat down, thought about what’s going on. What are we doing? How can we actually achieve the goals, the mission that we set out to achieve before? Why are we not meeting that mission? How can we shift things to meet that mission? And we started going from there, and we shifted the business model, and started heading in this direction. And it’s been a much faster growing direction. Now, so that, yes, that’s that’s where that’s, that’s what’s happened. And obviously, we started fundraising just like a few months ago, in the right in the midst of nine states a second wave. So Still, we we did it, we did it. And it is because of how we refocused ourselves and focus on what is the best for us to do at the current moment. And what is the best way to reach the objectives that we have, and make it happen. So despite COVID, like we’ve, we’ve, we’ve managed actually to make things go correctly and to make things go in an accelerated fashion. And I’d say, thanks to COVID actually, mysterious, strange way, because it gave us a good chance to introspect and figure out what exactly we should do in order to stay focused in one direction.

Andy Halko 27:31
I’m always interested in marketplaces. I find the concept interesting, because, you know, as I’ve worked with companies over the years, when you’re dealing with a marketplace, you typically to separate audiences, right? They may need different marketing, they may, they may need different features, and you kind of have to build them at the same time. Right? What’s been your experience? And I guess, insight in building a marketplace solution?

Aadith Moorthy 28:00
Right, right. Yeah. So in our case, in our case, we we it’s an iterative process, as probably as with any marketplaces, you focus on one side, you build it out, you focus on the next side, you build that focus on one side, you build that folks the next day, so so that that is a process. So once we actually started with this redesign to a marketplace, we we initially started trying to see what where’s the demand side and started to study the demand side and tried to get a demand going. And it turned out that the demand was actually relatively fast to get, because there’s so many organizations interested in carbon, carbon removal, and those kinds of things. So we kind of also helped in our marketing by macro effects, macro effects of what people everywhere think about and what people think should be done for the climate. So there’s macro effects that help us to deal with that. But of course, marketing Yes, there’s a slightly different marketing that goes out to the buyers of the carbon credits, as opposed to people are generating carbon credits. The marketing going out to the buyers is around. This is a way for you to to remove co2 at lowest cost while helping farmers around the world who are some of the worst affected by COVID. And, and you have all this opportunity to police all sorts of CO benefits, like reduce the desertification, some parts to reduce pollution in some major cities that comes from agricultural waste, burning, all sorts of things are all sorts of CO benefits alters of environmental justice outcomes. We have to enable all those things. And that’s the kind of message that goes out to the corporate. Well, of course, to the farmers slightly different message around around this is an opportunity for you to improve your lands fertility and also increase your income substantially through the carbon credits that are being produced. So there’s a slightly different message of course, but we were We have kind of been helped by our timing in making the right message because the message about, about doing something about climate action is already up there in all of the corporate boardrooms. And when we come in with our message, it’s, it’s very easy just sinks in with what what the corporate wants to do what the corporation’s want to do. So it fits in directly on the on demand side. And on the sell side, you know, like what when you say, you’re going to pay farmers extra for doing something extra income for them, there’s always a much, much greater interest, much greater interest to do things much faster. So, so all those things come together and enable and enable us to build on both sides fast.

Andy Halko 30:47
I assume most corporations are familiar with the concept of buying, you know, carbon credits, but you know, on the other side, I’m curious. And you can tell me if that’s true or not, but on the other side, are farmers familiar with the concept of selling? And do you need to educate them on that?

Aadith Moorthy 31:04
Well, yeah, so they’re not quite familiar with the concept of selling, right. So that’s, that’s, if what we were doing already existed, then we would not need to exist. So there, they are clearly not familiar with the concept of selling carbon credits on the farmers site. There is some education while there is some education wall and how do they actually increase soil carbon, that’s usually done by our partners on the ground, the several partners we have that actually work with large numbers of farmers in the news on the ground. So today, they enable that to happen by working with the farmers. But then again, it’s very simple message. There’s no, we’re not telling the farmers about complex things like future delivery, futures contracts options out No, no, we’re not telling them all these complicated markets, terms, commodity market terms, now, we were giving them very simple message, you increase soil carbon, do what you do best build up your plants and build up that biomass and increase soil carbon, have to remove co2 from the atmosphere, do what you do best, we will pay you for that increase in soil carbon, after we have to sell that increase to the corporates or to the companies. And that’s it. So we sell we give them very simple message. They don’t need to they of course, they’re welcome to learn about all the complexities that come with the commodity market, in carbon, but it’s optional. And it starts from very simple message that we are able to bring additional value to you from these kinds of ways. And we enable that entire process.

Tony Zayas 32:44
As the founder and CEO, I would like to hear a little bit about your team. And it looks like like the new guys are hiring as well. But before we get to that, I would like to hear where are you spending most of your time and effort as the founder and CEO right now with the business?

Aadith Moorthy 33:05
Yeah, so yeah, so let’s start with that piece. So I’m, I would consider myself both the CEO and also the technical lead. So I at this stage, I’m doing both. So I so right now, my time is probably split up some. Now other than that, other than talking to VC, so you should put that in a separate bucket, things that are actually building the business in terms of business development. And in terms of technology development, I’d say it’s probably 50 50 at the moment between business development and technology development. And then within business development, there’s supply side development, and then there’s, there’s demand side development. It’s a marketplace so that that that split is also there, but that’s good fluctuates depending on where we are at the moment. Are we supply short? Are we demand short? Right now, we are really working on getting more certified supply supply that is certified through third party programs that we are able to work and create where we have real supply shortage. So it turns gave up that supply. So that’s where most of that business development time goes to. So that that’s how I typically organize my time. And then of course, on our team, we do have other folks who are very focused on on other business development aspects, like we have, we have people in a few different parts of the world who were focused on those particular parts of the world. Like for example, we have a business development lead for India. We have a business development lead for Europe, Middle East Africa. And and of course, there’s Latin America and the US but I tend to take care of that myself directly for the most part as at least today, but we are hiring for, for for the extension of these work or the these things and also hiring for further technical things. So if anyone in your audience is interested in really moving the needle on climate change fast, and working in a fast growing startup, that that is that’s already working with the various fortune 500 companies on the demand side and also launch lots of land on the supply side, there in May, they’re invited to reach out and, and convey their interest in being a part of moving the needle on climate change. So that’s an open, open request an offer for people in your audience to reach out if they’re interested. So that so right now, really, we are in a fast growth mode. So we are actually trying to hire much faster now that we also have that funding lined up and all these things coming together.

Tony Zayas 35:54
It`s great.

Andy Halko 35:55
So what is that? I’m kind of curious from, you know, especially because a lot of our audience, our founders and folks is, you know, how do you picture leveraging that funding to scale the company, you know, what’s the, what’s the game plan from? we’ve we’ve certified funding? And now now, what do we do?

Aadith Moorthy 36:17
Yeah, so a significant piece of the funding Right, right. Now, what we’re trying to do is, we are building out a much larger software infrastructure actually do to enable the generation and certification and measurement of these outcomes, sufficient, especially soil carbon and carbon sequestration outcomes much faster. So, so right now we have a certain kind of bootstrapped infrastructure that kind of works kind of, it’s kind of slow. And it’s kind of not that great. We are in the process of scaling it up. So that we can do things at a much faster, much larger level for many different geographical regions around the world. Like, for example, right now, we have like a million acres, Mexico, similar sized situation, India, slightly smaller in East Africa, but all over, like, we have a lot of work going on around the world. If you were to use our current infrastructure to do things, it’ll take us many months to get analyses out of it for that kind of scale. In terms of land, we are, we are in the process of scaling up all of that software infrastructure and writing the software to do that. So that that is a significant portion of where the current piece of the funding will go to. But there’s also a significant, there’s also certain business development and the further furthering of the business that will happen. And of course, marketing. Marketing will also happen to accelerate both the demand side and supply side. But overall, it’s a very interesting time, a great time of growth at at CONSERWATER, or as you say, BOOMITRA our new name.

Andy Halko 37:53
I was kind of curious, you know, when you talk about carbon credits, and and your AI measuring it, does it need to be certified by a third party? Or how does that work? To make it something that can actually be sold?

Aadith Moorthy 38:06
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. So there, there are definitely on there, there are definitely organizations out there that are operating in various scales that so carbon goods, not necessarily always from agriculture, but from various other sources, that they’re not necessarily certified, but are certified by their own technology or themselves. What we have found, actually, is that most companies, they like to have a third party certification that comes from a nonprofit, because we’re for profit, it’s our motive to generate more carbon credits, is that necessarily the right motive for someone who’s trying to produce a fully standardized carbon credit that can be sold at scale, and produce these environmental outcomes? Probably not on its own, because we are motivated is actually generate more carbon credits as a whole. So there are nonprofits who come up with the standards, or in some cases, governments, you know, governments in where there’s carbon tax regulation, the government’s come up with the regulations of how you actually produce these. So using our technology, we have to quantify everything, which is the hard part with the getting anything certified. But once we quantify what happens is we have to work with these nonprofit nonprofit standards. And, and apply that standard to the credit after they undergo the audit through the nonprofits or to the government, regulatory body in some cases, so that once that nonprofit approval is there, then as long as the nonprofit is like an internationally recognized nonprofit in this space, then then of course, all the clients all the companies are very interested in that kind of credit, because then dictates it’s third party validated by a nonprofit that does not have a financial motive in trying to say there’s more credits here than we’re actually used. So So once we have that third party approval, it’s a great thing. It’s a commodity at that point, just like wheat or corn or, or electricity, it becomes a commodity product that we’re able to sell at a much greater scale. So, yeah.

Andy Halko 40:15
No, have you had to deal with a lot of, you know, government regulation or anything related to, I guess, you know, different cultures or countries as you’re building this?

Aadith Moorthy 40:27
Of course, all the time all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, for each, depending on different, I think the culture aspect is probably the most interesting one. And depending on how people’s cultures are built, they use technology interact with technology, in different ways, and their ability to actually adopt, or their interest in adopting new kinds of practices, new kinds of technologies, new kinds of efficient ways of doing things. It all varies with the culture, actually. And we’ve tried to kind of mitigate for that by having local partners, and partners who really understand their communities, and really understand how they think, and we’re working with those kinds of partners, we are able to, we were able to surmount many of these things. The partners are our translators, who may, or both literally and also figuratively, literally translating into foreign languages, figuratively translating into the culture that’s present there. And understanding what’s going on locally.

Tony Zayas 41:34
Where do you see your product moving in the next, you know, year to let’s say, three years? What is the vision, the game plan? Now that you have some funding and a lot of stuff on the horizon? Kind of what does that look like?

Aadith Moorthy 41:51
Yeah, so that the vision is really to the vision is really by the, by the end of the decade to be doing things at a greater than gigaton scale, in terms of in terms of carbon credit, and the carbon removal generation happening. So really moving the needle on climate change. That is that is the vision, long term and long term, short term. Right now we’re at the, we’re in the process of going of getting that third party certification for millions of credits. Right now. So millions of tons of carbon removal, millions of tons of co2 removed from the atmosphere, are in various stages of being accredited. And that is, there’s really the game plan right now is to create that value added to the game plan right now is to completely standardize all of the process that we can repeatedly create millions and millions and millions of tons of carbon removal fast. And at scale. And from our existing partners, just for existing partners we have today who have all these resources. So that is the game plan right now is this year, an early part of next year, millions and millions of tons are created, certified, and sold. And then taking that and then scaling that making it more efficient scaling that scaling that scaling that within the existing geographies, but also new geographies, where it becomes extremely interesting as well. Like, for example, I think this goes back to a piece of your old question that I did not answer. But there’s there’s a, there’s certain countries that are also incorporating carbon credits directly into their carbon tax programs directly for for, for paying carbon taxes. Like for example, in Canada, it’s a good good example right here across the border. And much closer for you in Cleveland. So Canada, in Canada, actually, there, they have said that soil carbon sequestration is a valid way to meet their carbon tax obligations. So so that’s happening next year, actually, in Canada is when the law actually become official, you can do these things. And we are well poised for that as well. So over so that’s the real goal here is to generate almost all of the carbon removal that the world needs. And that scale, that the lowest cost while driving huge impact back to the farmers around the world. And really achieving that triple bottom line.

Andy Halko 44:24
I’m kind of interested, you know, being that you have the background in AI it’s such a huge buzzword right now. What do you define or how do you look at AI as being, you know, truly artificial intelligence when it’s involved in a product? And and what does the you know, and and also, what do you see the trajectory of AI in the next couple of years?

Aadith Moorthy 44:51
Yeah, sure. Sure. So, so AI is has become really, really, really broad term recently. So it’s good this do a jump in and say, are we talking about AI? In its most broadest sense, are we talking about machine learning, specifically within AI? Are we talking about deep learning within machine learning, they will all have slightly different trajectories. But, but in terms of in terms of general machine learning, in terms of machine learning, we are right now we probably seeing a lot of lot of single purpose or specific purpose, machine learning technologies that are really getting a lot of traction space specific fields. Like for example, what we do, I would say it’s kind of, although the applications for the technology itself is very general purpose, the actual, the actual measurement, the actual prediction by the AI is a single purpose thing that is very specifically for soil carbon, or soil moisture, or nutrients. It’s kind of a single purpose, ai that sense. And those kinds of single purpose AI`s have been seeing a lot of increasing increasing traction throughout many different fields. Of course, there’s our own concept with carbon sequestration, as many folks doing related things in the healthcare space, where they have single purpose AI`s for achieving certain single purpose things, and so on. So there’s single purpose AI`s on making process, either more efficient, or unlocking properties that were never possible before. Through single purpose AI. That is, that’s what we’ll probably see for the next several years. And it would be a very, very long time before we ever see a general purpose AI, like a robot that can think for itself and just do everything on its own. Now, there will be probably an extensive long time before we see that. But we are right now seeing the huge proliferation of these kinds of single purpose AI`s that are able to do certain tasks really good and unlock new tasks, we need we that we were never able to do before

Andy Halko 47:00
in healthcare as just an example for audiences, you know, x rays for cancer scans that are able to, you know, look at images at bulk and be able to do a better job of

Aadith Moorthy 47:13
detecting cancer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s single purpose, kind of AI. Also similar to what we do, like, instead of x rays, we look at satellite images across many different wavelengths, not one way many different wavelengths. And then we’re trying to measure detect carbon, so it’s kind of similar. Yeah, it’s kind of similar.

Andy Halko 47:36
I see that. I’m just gonna shifting gears is where, you know, winding down a little bit. I’m curious about your, you know, what’s been your biggest learning lesson or takeaway from having started a business? You know, and usually that comes from a mistake or challenge. But, you know, what, what have you learned? And what can you share with our audience? That’s been a big insight or learning lesson.

Aadith Moorthy 48:07
Probably that it’s, it’s always way harder than it seems. It’s always doing things, it’s always ends up being way harder than it usually seems, in most cases, and in some cases, maybe not. But in most cases, when you look at other folks, you feel probably feel like they are doing things extremely efficiently. And they’re doing things really well. It’s always way harder than it seems. And boils down at the end of the day, just perseverance, and being focused, and doing things carefully, timely, and appropriately, to really get the key results that you’re you’re aiming after and not worrying about all the other side results. They’re not as important, but just focusing on the key attribute that really matters, whatever your milestone is. So that’s what I’ve sort of learned. the hard way, by going through various process is I hear is, it’s very important to kind of focus on what is the most important thing do we build in any given point in time, and focus on that most important aspect for your milestones. And then of course, beyond that. It’s always good to budget out extra resources for everything because it’s going to be harder than you expect to actually make things happen. Especially when those aspects or involve external organizations or people outside of your organization, people, people beyond in and other partner organizations or even with clients or with buyers or sellers, they will take their own time to do things. So we have to budget for all of that and make sure that we are able to do things efficiently. bringing everyone together and producing the most value towards the singular are a few goals that we set. Not be worried about everything else just focus on what is important.

Andy Halko 50:05
Yeah, the myth of the overnight success. I always loved those infographics and articles about really successful entrepreneurs that failed seven times. But nobody ever talks about that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, that’s great.

Tony Zayas 50:21
So some exciting stuff here on the horizon. where can our followers before we guys dive into, you know, our last question or two? Where can people who are watching follow you learn about what’s going on with CONSERWATER slash BOOMITRA is

Aadith Moorthy 50:41
that the new name? Yes. Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Okay. Yes, you can, you can visit. Yeah, you can visit our website, obviously. Is it CONSERWATER.com. BOOMITRA.com, B O, B O O M I T R A, BOOMITRA.com. You can visit that as well. And obviously, you can you can find us on all social media, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and not yet tiktok. We have not done tik tok yet. Maybe? Maybe you guys are on ticktok.

Andy Halko 51:17
Not yet. I keep getting pushed to do it. And I haven’t done it yet.

Aadith Moorthy 51:21
Okay. Okay. So mainly, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you can also follow me directly on on any of those platforms as well. So yeah, so that’s where you can learn more. And stay tuned for the exciting updates that are coming up.

Andy Halko 51:42
So just one more question to close on, you know, we’re always talking to really technical folks that are on the bleeding edge of things. I’m kind of curious from, you know, I’ve been asking everyone this kind of same question. What do you see is the most transformative, transformative technology for the world in the next, you know, five to 10 years? What do you see being just have the greatest impact for you know, us as a global society?

Aadith Moorthy 52:18
Yeah, so I’m going to go back and say, AI. I’m going to go back and say AI. Because AI, although I told you, like most folks are doing single purpose, ai ‘s. And that’s what gaining more traction, ai itself. In a way, it’s a general purpose technology, because it can be applied in so many different fields for producing single purpose, either efficiency improvement, or a whole new capability that you’ve never seen before, in in so many different fields. And we haven’t really even realized what is the potential across all of these different fields, be it, be it healthcare, be it in, in a remote sensing in satellite mouth, is be it in, in just in regular SaaS world, or whatever is the case, we have not even seen what is the full potential yet. Because there’s so many new applications coming out. So many better ways of training, AI models coming out from academia as well, all that coming together, and producing all sorts of new and wonderful potential ways to use technology. Of course, there’s also the bad side of how AI is enabling us to be tractive, worse than before, but then again, there’s also all of these benefits. So be it a good way or a bad way. AI is probably the most transformative technology. It’s already been transformed over the past five years, and will continue to be very transformative over the next 10 years, as well.

Andy Halko 53:52
I mean, like, like a lot of things AI is a tool to be used and whether it’s good or bad. Yes, exactly. scary thing.

Tony Zayas 54:03
Well, very cool. Love it. This has been fascinating. We’ve really enjoyed our conversation here today. So thank you for for joining and sharing with us and our audience. And I will certainly be paying attention to what you you know what you’re up to. And we probably like to have you back at some point to hear about the growth and development or what you guys been able to do. So, again, thanks for your time here today. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We will see you next time.

Aadith Moorthy 54:30
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you. See everyone.