 Welcome to the entrepreneur revolution press conference to everyone in the room and everyone else joining us on live stream at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The last time we were all in Davos uplink an open innovation platform designed to unlock entrepreneur revolution for people the planet by supporting startups innovative solutions for the world's most pressing problems was launched 28 months later we are gathered again to share the impact it has delivered meet its champions and launch a new partnership today I'm joined by Puneet Ranjan global CEO of Deloitte Mark Benioff chair and co-CEO of sales force in a moja land ambassador of at the United Nations Convention to combat this certification William Quendey founder of serious seas give me a new managing director of the center for nature climate at the World Economic Forum and Roshni Nadar Maltura who will be joining us later chairperson as HCL technologies welcome thank you so much for joining us for making time to speak with us uplink annual report was launched today as one of uplink three founders in 2020 Puneet could you please share with us your reflection on uplink's journey and how the platform has been necessary for Deloitte's impact objectives first thank you for that and it's great to be on the stage with my friend Mark and Roshni will be here we're all purpose driven organization so wonderful thank you so much for joining it you've made it right on time perfect so Roshni I was saying we're all purpose driven organizations it's wonderful to be on the stage with you and with some of these eco-preneurs that we will talk about and the weft you talked about impact let me give you some numbers in terms of what uplink has been able to achieve one billion dollars in funding for the innovators 16 million people provided access to essential health services 10 million people increase their income through uplink 2.8 metric tons of greenhouse gases I think this is million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions reduced I think it's actually pretty remarkable what uplink has achieved over the last two years something that mark mark may have envisioned it but it has certainly exceeded my expectations I want to comment on Deloitte but also talk a little bit about about Salesforce because we have similar values we're a purpose driven organization we're driven by making an impact for our clients that we serve the people that we hire and the communities that we live and work in and that is to make an impact that matters that is how we are that's our purpose and that governs everything that we do and so uplink really fits into that because the problems that we face that the United Nations is so eloquently put out with the SDGs can only be solved if everybody comes together business the the public sector civil society but one reason why we started uplink Salesforce Deloitte and Weff was to bridge the disconnect that exists between innovators, ecopeners and access to resources and capital and uplink was that bridge but what we didn't imagine was the impact that uplink would have for established entities like Deloitte and I want to spend just a minute and talk about that because I think it has had a tremendous impact it's certainly identified innovators and ecopeners and we've got a couple on the stage that will talk to you about it but at Deloitte we've made a commitment that we will impact 100 million people across the globe 50 million of them women and girls in India through education by leveraging our most valuable asset our people the 400,000 individuals that called Deloitte home and what we did with uplink was we launched a challenge to help us bridge the gap between what we were trying to do in impacting the 100 million people and we identified a number of ecopeners that we have now sponsored they've been with us for a year and the impact that they're having is unimaginable so uplink has not only helped bring ecopeners to come and help address problems that we face it has actually enabled a large established organization like Deloitte thank you and those are powerful numbers mark as one of the founding partner of uplink and an innovator of wenti.org an initiative that collaborating closely with the platform could you tell us why innovation is crucial at Salesforce climate objectives and also how ecopeners have been making a difference on the ground well thanks so much and thank you Panid and I think we're ready for a new environmental capitalism I think about that every day as the CEO of Salesforce we're now a company with 75,000 employees and the third largest software company in the world it's very meaningful to me that we're also net zero that we're fully renewable now that it's not some future commitment that we're making but that we realize the planet is a key stakeholder today it's one of the reasons why two years ago we came here to introduce one t.org the trillion tree program and why we're so excited to see such incredible commitments from corporations and governments all over the world including what we just heard from the ministers from the united states and and chinese um making further commitments to the trillion tree program to sequester 200 gigatons of carbon something we badly need to do for our planet and why we're committed to an ecopenor revolution energizing these ecopeners all these incredible young entrepreneurs people like me but it dedicated not to attack but to the environment and these ecopeners while they're guiding us to the future this is an exciting moment for us and we saw that really emerge punita and I were just here two years ago introducing uplink our companies built it and we deployed it here at the wef we didn't expect to have 30 000 ecopenors collaborating sharing coming up with new ideas new solutions every single day so that this is an important time this is a critical moment that we can all adopt a new environmental capitalism we can all become that zero we can certainly all plant a tree but we can also all support these incredible ecopenors who are about to hear from and you're going to see it all live in an action on uplink and thank you panete for your leadership because without it we would not have been able to achieve this incredible goal well done thank you thank you and speaking of this let's meet those ecopeners um william you are a top innovator and a winner of the 2021 1t.org sigh hill challenge first of all what is an ecoopernar especially what is an ecoopernar in west africa well uh we as seriu shea empower 500 women group in sustainable production of mango and shea which mean that we provide them platforms which are zero carbon zero deforestation so they can process their products which we bring to the world market the focus on the value chain is actually critical it is critical because it provides livelihood economic opportunity which are necessary to protect the great green wall because if we do not provide this opportunity the great green wall and all this other initiative might end up in charcoal we are very grateful to have been selected as an entrepreneur and a top innovator by 1t.org and uplink it has in fact changed a lot i'll say our development this it has evolved and we are now part of the 1t.org sigh hill coalition and with the other member of the coalition we are able to deliver accelerated change and impact on the ground this public private partnership coalition actually has eco entrepreneur has government businesses and also the civil society and this allowed to really provide a great impact and an accelerated development for the great green wall and the economy in the Sahel thank you inna could you tell us a bit more about what it is to work with 1t.org and uplink and what kind of support that they provide eco entrepreneurs so like you said before i'm a unccd ambassador so i started almost six years ago doing an advocacy for the great green wall project and it was really under the radar when i started and i see how impactful and how important it is not just for the Sahel but for the whole world because when the great green wall will be achieved in the end it is something that is going to benefit all of us and for me i created a non-profit based on the web three and really harnessing the power of creativity and the creative economy there to create a bridge between the web three communities and the real world communities of people who are living either on the front line of climate change or are going through social and gender issues and so that has been something quite exciting because web three and NFTs a lot of people have heard about NFTs but don't quite know what it is and what we are doing is really embracing this new technologies that is very exciting and the communities that are building the web three space and bringing awareness to different projects so we did some auctions we helped a lot of projects in the great green wall by supporting them not just with funding but also partnerships and have people really know about them engaging these web three communities into becoming more activist because there is a sense of giving back in the space and it's something that i personally am building towards to really harness that and have have thousands of people become activists and doing the the work that i am doing today because a lot of people don't know where to start and art and communities are for me communities are the heart of everything and looking at the great green wall how it evolved they are the essence of the project they are the heart of it and that's why i push for community driven solutions and if we can create a global movement by using the web three this is something that i am very open to to see let's see how it goes in a few years thank you and uh expanding a little bit on what you've said you know you've talked about this community and really that's what uplink is creating um gimway can you share with us how important um first of all how important innovation it is to to accelerate meeting the sdgs but also how important it is to have collaboration to move entrepreneurship forward first i want to congratulate the ecopreneurs as well as to thank deloitte and salesforce for their leadership on launching uplink innovation platform it's only two years old but we've actually seen the power of how it can actually mobilize uh innovation efforts uh the priority for us on the climate and nature agenda is around action action action the crisis is upon us we need to act and we need to support innovators and entrepreneurs uh and get their solutions to the market the second area that i also want to use this opportunity to call for is scale and speed and really the need for us to really call on all the funds uh capital philanthropy as well as others to invest and supporting this entrepreneurs to bring their solutions and implemented at scale right uh we need to really act very quickly and act at large scale in order to address the challenge that is already upon our doorstep uh one trillion trees dot org is about tree planting it's about land restoration uh it's a public private partnership and part of this is mobilizing corporates to make tree commitments uh tree tree planting commitments but also to energize innovators to look at how we can plant trees and use technology uh to do this in a way that is robust and resilient and self-sustaining uh so it is really a the kinds of collaboration we hope to foster more uh and uh within the forum i mentioned this because i'm also very delighted today to be sitting next to uh miss roshney nada uh mahotra and uh and uh we have a new collaboration to continue to launch new themes on the uplink platform and today the one that we're going to launch is around water and i'm very delighted uh that roshney uh has agreed and decided to champion uh water entrepreneurs um and i'll leave her to share more about her vision around the space yeah giveaway uh has teased us a little bit about this new announcement so um can you make the big announcement and let us know about this new partnership thank you so much to everybody here um you know just to set a little bit of perspective by 2030 the world population will be 8.5 um billion and the demand for fresh water not just by us humans as a species for food production and health but also natural habitats biodiversity will exceed more than 40 percent even today only one percent of um the world's fresh water is accessible which is your rivers lakes ponds and wetlands the rest is in glaciers and underground and this is depleting fast as we know um and most are categorized as poor to very poor in ecological health now i come from a country which is 17 percent of the world's population and growing but only home to four percent of the world's fresh water sources and by 2030 um you know at least in india the urbanization is expected to increase by 50 percent so you can imagine the stress that's going to be on water recharge on people on biodiversity on natural habitats and even urban natural habitats um you know uh while this magnet this problem is magnified when it's in india it's equally magnified in many parts of the world um so you know today i wanted to launch an initiative with uplink and it's called the aquapreneurs innovation initiative not very original from ecopreneurs um but um the focus is going to be fresh water and um you know what how can we source innovation entrepreneurs in fresh water solutions across the world um increasing people increasing talent capacity in the field providing a landscape for collaboration there might be solutions that already exist but how can we provide various aqua labs all over the world where they can actually experiment their innovation and ideas and really look for nature based solutions tech based solutions who are the young people who are working in this space um so thank you so much and um you know i represent an organization an it services organization with more than 200 000 people uh you know since it's always founded we used to call them ideapreneurs so it's really good that we've leaped from techpreneurs ideapreneurs to ecopreneurs and aquapreneurs so so thank you thank you so my panelists were incredibly succinct and we've managed to squeeze out a few minutes for questions so if there's any questions in the room um i'll open up the floor um i know there's a few journalists here if you can state your name and organization please hi my name is jessica from eco business i'm based in singapore so my question really is that we've seen the markets been very volatile and in times like that investors seek safety and i run a fund myself so i know that a lot of the capital is actually flying to fix income or really safe investments whereas investing in innovation and venture is considered as a little higher risk so i'd love to hear some views on whether you think um that this would jeopardize perhaps the innovation around sdgs that we're hoping to see or do you see you know new areas or new pools of capital coming to fund these ecopreneurs aquapreneurs thank you if anyone that seems very open and everyone's qualified to answer that question i'm happy to answer it i i think that you you're witnessing an ecopreneur revolution and uh is incredible numbers of new uh entrepreneurs who are starting new companies in silicon valley where i'm from it's estimated that 25 percent of all new companies are focused on environmental solutions and while valuations might be resetting um in this kind of environment maybe they even got a little peeky i would say uh you can see now that this is still going to be an opportunity because there's so much capital that can be deployed by investors on this incredible new sector and you're seeing solutions that are going to deliver tremendous returns and already have uh to the investment community so i think it's actually going to be a very positive environment and great companies are born in recessions sales force was born in 2001 in a recession and i expect a lot of these ecopreneurs will be born in this recession as well i would echo what mark just said but i would just add two quick points one um you know we talk a lot about technological innovation and that will play a critical role uh but nature-based solutions and roshni i was very glad to hear that part of what you're launching today has a nature-based component to it nature-based solutions i think which are um community oriented uh and are less uh costly uh are equally important um and i think that is going to play a critical role i think one of the point that we forget is that investors and other stakeholders certainly are key here but let's take deloitte the reason why we do this why i do this is i have 400 000 professionals 86 percent of them are millennials and gen z's and i i poll them every quarter invariably they ask me what does deloitte do beyond its core profit motive we will hire 70 000 professionals this year we will compete with roshni at some of the best universities and they will ask us what does deloitte do beyond its core profit motive so if you don't have a credible response within the organization and within our communities we're not going to hire the very best individuals and we are definitely not going to retain them so come recession i think this revolution is here to stay if i can just add um return on nature also takes time um so i think that uh as soon as you start measuring the way you've measured return on investments in other startups you um devalue the impact that you create so um you know building frameworks that measure return on investments in nature or in these ecopreneurs or aquapreneurs their solutions might take a little longer uh how you define risk will also be different but um i think uh you know um there is an opportunity at least for large organizations like us to deploy patient capital and allow the solutions to actually evolve and um as punit said nature-based solutions exist and they might take a little longer to show impact but they will as a ecopreneur from the sahel uh we also took action and opportunities uh within this crisis uh two weeks ago at the cop 15 in abijan we had a meeting where we're looking at using our platforms to mobilize more food stuff for the global economy we think that we can significantly contribute to the resilience of the global food market by using our technologies to bring online a significant amount of food products hi my name is martin i work for the chinese news agency xin hua in the chinese television cgtm congratulations first of all great initiative but it does sound very nice so how do you actually make it work in the context of covet 19 and the decoupling and more geopolitical tensions i would like to ask a punit and mark as well because we still have a monopoly of capital being deployed mainly to the likes of silicon valley and so on so in terms of geographic diversification how will you make sure that more you know developing markets frontier markets and so on can benefit thank you well my friend mark here says nobody's against a tree so whether we in china geopolitics plays nothing in terms of some of these solutions that are being proposed by these ecopreneurs um and i and i'd you know mark gave an example of silicon valley i think they're ecopreneurs and entrepreneurs in china and in mainland china for instance we are we've committed to helping 10 million left behind children as china has rapidly urbanized and developed many of these children have been left with grandparents and others and there's an educational component there so there are opportunities in china and we are deploying across the globe you want to add to that well i think we just came from a panel in the plenary where we heard from minister shea's anwa and he said that in order to combat climate change and to green the planet that china will actively respond to the world economic forums one t.org initiative which sales force started now two and a half years ago by planting and conserving uh 70 billion trees by 2030 so this is very exciting china has about 25 percent of the world's trees as you know we had six trillion trees we now only have three trillion trees left on our planet we need to put a trillion trees back and so if we're going to add a trillion trees then i hope that china will put in 250 billion trees and this is an incredible opportunity because i think as punit said nobody is anti-tree and we can have a tree tree diplomacy and if we can agree on the tree maybe we can also find other things that we can agree to as well and on that i mean sorry if i just supplement that because the trillion trees is already in sahil with the great green wall in india in america and with china coming on i think we have a very good momentum to continue to scale the efforts forward so on that wonderful vision of all of us agreeing on a tree i would like to thank my panelists today for making the time to share with us new partnership tell stories of the impact of uplink and the expansions and extension that is coming into the future thank you all for joining us today in the room and on the live stream thank you