Arara.io performs ESG assessment and connects suppliers with funders

RIO – Concern about the climate emergency has led more and more Brazilian companies to commit to the ESG (environment, social and governance) agenda, but creating viable plans to reduce environmental damage is no simple task.

It is in this context that Arara.io, a “green fintech” and a pioneer in Brazil, arrives in the country, which works with ESG assessment of the supply chain and financing for suppliers that follow the best practices.

With offices in Miami and Washington, in the United States, the company landed in Rio three weeks ago and invested more than R$11 million to start operations here.

ESG Financing

Created from the executive experience of three partners, Indians Ram Mahidhara and Sudhi Mukherjee and Brazilian Felipe Gutterres, the American start-up connects anchor companies — usually those with revenues above R$300 million and a robust supply chain — to sustainable suppliers and funders.

For this, Arara.io developed a system for evaluating anchor companies and their suppliers based on its own taxonomy (classification and organization of information), based on different international approaches, including the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (Sasb).

Based on technology and data, Arara.io generates a ranking of suppliers, who are able to improve their ESG practices in order to seek differentiated credits from financiers, that is, financial institutions in general that are interested in offering resources with aligned with ESG issues.

Gutterres, co-founder and CEO of Arara.io, highlights that the bottleneck in supply chains during the pandemic has made the relevance of suppliers to the longevity of companies and their business models more evident.

He also assesses that the Brazilian market has the potential to leverage the ESG agenda, given that the country is the eighth economy in the world, the largest in Latin America and has a well-developed financial market.

On the other hand, however, he recalls that there is a funding gap for small and medium-sized companies in the country, estimated at around US$ 100 billion, according to World Bank data.

— How to engage suppliers and bring ESG into small and medium-sized companies? We understand that the incentive for an evolution in sustainability also involves the financial issue. We see in financing the best way for the ESG agenda to evolve, also bringing liquidity to small and medium-sized companies — explains Gutterres.

$3 billion target

The start-up’s plans for the country are well defined. The objective is to move R$ 3 billion on the platform in the first year and multiply this amount by ten by the end of the third year of operation in Brazil.

Gutterres says that the start-up has been talking to players from different sectors and that it is in the phase of receiving anchor companies and funders on the platform. But there is a lot to be explored:

— You have infrastructure challenges (including sanitation, logistics, telecommunications, agribusiness, energy). And there are challenges in retail. We’ve been talking to some industries. These are our goals and focuses.

By Carolina Nalin on 25/02/2022

Source: https://oglobo.globo.com/economia/negocios/fintech-verde-que-financia-praticas-sustentaveis-em-cadeias-de-fornecedores-chega-ao-pais-25408816