Mantle Labs / Geotree
- Ashu Sikri (Unlicensed)
Overview
Mantle Labs provides financial risk management products to BFSI and agribusiness clients that leverage remote sensing (eg, credit scoring and monitoring). They have also co-developed insurance products.
Geotree is a partnership between ML and Hartree (a commodities trading firm) which aims to develop and market ag-based carbon offsets.
Potential complementarity between DG’s on-ground MRV with ML’s remote sensing approach. See value in DG’s video based training models to drive practice adoption. Also, Geotree (through Hartree) brings offset buyers and handles project development process
Call Notes: Aug 10, 2021
Call with Rishikesh Sapre (co-founder) and Jon Pierre (Business lead)
ML developed an AI engine that can look through cloud clover and track crop performance in cloudy conditions. Did not get into specifics around accuracy and what parameters are tracked (seems like crop health is the focus); can cover in a future call.
Hartree is an active carbon project developer. Expertise in project design, issuing credits and navigating the certification process. Also finances and offtakes credits generated by a project and trades those
MOU w Olam in west africa (togo, chad, ivory coast). Transition cotton farmers to sustainable practices; Hartree is designing the carbon offset component. 300k farmers to start with a goal of 1mn farmers within a year.
These are Olam contract farmers so Olam shares production practices which align with procurement policies; Olam handles training and monitoring.
Mantle claims $ to farmers after accounting for transaction costs will “move the needle” but didn’t give a number. They are trying to stack benefits and looking at Verra’s Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta) down.
Another part of the value prop is that Mantle works with local FS partners who use their risk management products participating farmers are pre-approved for a loan and insurance product
Their sense is that Verra is the registry of choice for buyers (70% of new projects are going this route); VM42 in the standard
Scoping a project on managed grazing
Want to do a rice project, co-develop a new methodology for rice w Verra
Next Steps: Share some additional details on our respective work and re-convene in a couple weeks to explore if there is something tangible we can do together