 Everyone's different here at the Canopy Workspace, different organisations, projects and specialisms. But here inside the Entopia building there's also a common goal that brings us together. There's a collective desire to accelerate change and sustainability is at the heart of it. The Canopy is all about collaboration, a community sharing and learning from each other's experiences. And this is Canopy Connect, a podcast where you can get to know your fellow members at the Canopy. This time on the podcast. Hi, I'm Francesca Kennedy Warbank, I'm the co-CEO of Carbon Bright. So, let's connect. So, let me tell you a bit about Carbon Bright. We are a B2B SaaS platform that automates life cycle assessments. So what does that actually mean? Well, my background is actually at Unilever. I was working there for about seven years in supply chain, sustainability and marketing. And through that process really wanted to understand the impact of individual products and realise that today's methods make it really challenging. It's usually done by consultants with 70% of their time taken up by data collection. It's expensive, about £25,000 per product and it takes about 12 weeks. And that made me really annoyed because that's a $1 billion problem for a company like Unilever with 77,000 products and therefore it's never going to become commonplace. So at Carbon Bright we wanted to solve that data problem and we are creating a platform that basically goes out and collects this data from 100,000 different data sources and counting. It's basically creating a digital supply chain of a product. It then uses machine learning models so we utilise AI and within that we're building different models to predict, for example, how ingredients are transported, we're modelling emission factors at scale, we're predicting where factories are and the emissions are factories and then we display that in a B2B SaaS platform. And then what that's enabling people to do is obviously understand their product level emissions but they can use that for redesigning products. So our mission is to decarbonise supply chains at scale. So once you have a baseline and understand the carbon footprint of your scope 3, which is by the way for consumer package goods about 97% of their emissions, they're able to start redesigning products at the right level. So supplier level through procurement, through changing transport lanes, moving from say sea to rail or say air freight to rail is more likely. But on top of that it also enables them to make sustainability marketing claims because they have the data there to back it up and also this can be used for reporting. So our focus is 100% on consumer package goods and to start with we're very much focused on home care, beauty and personal care products. So carbon bright was actually founded at the Carbon 13 Accelerator here in Cambridge. I joined the programme from a referral from my Prince's Trust mentor at the time and went into the programme with a slight idea of look let's try and do this at scale and I met very quickly my co-founder David, he's based in the US but he came over, loved the idea and had a kind of inkling that this was the place to go in supply chain decarbonisation. We then decided to leave that programme at the second stage as we didn't have the right team around us. I don't know if you know the programme, there's 100 people that go in and you have to meet your core team. So we went out, we found a CTO externally, finding the right people to build the team is really important. We took a lot of time speaking to about five different people we trialled in the end until we came across Thage Ass who is our CTO and he's a great addition. His background is in big data, two decades of experience in machine learning, AI. So great addition and us three now are the core co-founders of Carbon Bright. Success to Carbon Bright is meeting our big mission and vision. We want to be the data provider behind every purchasing decision that someone makes. So you're going into Tesco, you see Carbon Bright's information pre-going in, you're going to be notified with better products using our data. You're at point of sale, it's not there yet but we're going to be involved in the carbon labelling that potentially is there. Then through sale you're going to hear about better products to buy on your app, the Tesco Club Card app. That's our big vision. So success to us is working with a client such as our lead retailer. First of all, helping them with their strategy. So okay, we do the full product environmental footprints across the whole scale of your SKUs, all of your products. From that we then give you hotspot analysis. So we say these are the key areas that you need to be focused on. For example, one of our clients is very focused on packaging right now, spending a lot of money on these. But actually that isn't the key area they should be focused on. And so it's just educating them that actually you need to be focused more on maybe consumer use. In home care that's the biggest bit or maybe your raw materials. So it's re-educating them just to start with. It's working with them on the individual categories and saying, you know, showing them this is a better supplier. This is a better raw ingredient. This is a better transport route. So helping them with that decarbonisation story, utilizing our platform. And then ending with greener products that sell more, that sell faster. That can be priced more expensively because they are more sustainable. So that is the ultimate game. For now, our focus is to get revenue. In the short term, so six months, we're aiming for 100,000 ARR, which means that we are collaborating with small to medium sized brands to start with. Within a year, we want to be onboarding a large corporate. So our focus is the Unilever's, L'Oreal's, P&G's of the world and getting them on board. So very customer focus as you can hear. But at the same time for ours, partnerships are really key. So we have a full partnership strategy and we would love to land a key partner. So, you know, RAP, ACLCA, Microsoft, we're working with tech partners as well. So that is also on the roadmap. And then a five year plan would be working in our space with a partner potentially like Fujitsu and looking to make the biggest change and difference we can. I know I'd love to meet a lot of the canopy members. That'd be great. I am based in Surrey, so I come to Cambridge and to the canopy building once a month. But I would love to meet you all. So the best way to contact me is via LinkedIn. It's Francesca Kennedy Warbank. As far as I know, I am the only one on there. But you can also email me. It's francescaacarbonbright.co. Otherwise, you can visit our website and use our contact form as I wear many hats. I am the one replying to those. But, you know, if I am in the building, please do come say hi. I'm a friendly face. Obviously, the canopy is filled with such amazing people. And we would love to meet literally as many people as possible because in our line of work, there are at one level that could be we need data partnerships. We need someone that's really into tech or knows how to collect data at scale. Then we need someone who really knows supply chains. So if you're someone that understands the details of making a supply chain and creating it into a digital twin, then all the way to someone that's embedded in the FMCG industry who knows people in retailers, Superdrug Boots or Tasker etc. All the way to maybe you are a storyteller because we're working with brands that actually don't know how to discuss their sustainability outwardly using our data. So honestly at every level, there are different people that we could be introduced to even when we're talking about agri-tech because we we're gathering data from at farm level as well. Also, I'm a great connector. I have a big network and I love to also connect people. So maybe I could help you as well. Thanks for checking out this episode of Canopy Connect. Log in to your office R&D profile to connect with your Canopy neighbors. Just head to the members page and find them. This is a Canopy podcast made by Newell Lottman. The Canopy is part of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Thank you for listening.