"I felt that the scale was the reason we focused on agriculture, and the fact that that is where the people at $2 a day are—or even $6 a day, that’s another threshold for poverty. If I want to address the problem, I need to go where they are. So let’s try to figure out what their issues are, what the problems are. As for climate, I had started with that sustainability reporting piece while I was at Keppel. That was in real estate, and it was very well defined. Outside of real estate, it was very hard to come up with concrete, measurable things. I also invested in this company weighting for materiality for listed companies for ESG." - Joanna Yeo, Founder and CEO of Arukah" - Joanna Yeo
"People burn agriculture waste because it's not valuable, but if you can aggregate it in a certain way, these biomass-type projects are very valuable in global markets. We see the opportunity to create a very standardized set of projects that can do that. And the other piece—because we are very committed to poverty alleviation—is that we commit 50% of our carbon credit project revenue to the participating farmers, so we can unlock more income for them. That also makes it feasible for them to do things. I feel like a lot of the climate space or carbon markets have this mindset where they're like, 'Oh, it's very hard to get farmers to change their behavior,' but you're asking someone to change their behavior for 10 years with no income." - Joanna Yeo, Founder and CEO of Arukah" - Joanna Yeo
"But in 2018, my mentor—who's now one of our advisors—was then the CEO of the IFC's SME Finance Forum. I connected with him through the Harvard network. Alumni networks are very valuable and helpful. I said, 'Matt, I'm very worried about small businesses and market access,' because from where we were sitting, investing in private equity and also in tech, I could see the wedge growing in terms of opportunities. How do they survive, right? He said, 'Oh, I understand what you're concerned about.' He was the one who said, 'Look at mobile and blockchain.' I said, 'Okay, mobile I get, but blockchain? What are you talking about? It's like crypto cowboys.' And he said, 'No, look at blockchain as infrastructure.' The fact that it's immutable, distributed, and secure—these are very powerful in markets where you don't have secure access to centralized sources of data and finance. So look at how you build a credit history." - Joanna Yeo, Founder and CEO of Arukah" - Joanna Yeo
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on Wall Street to ClimateTech, biochar carbon credits, and 50% farmer revenue share.
Keywords: Joanna Yeo, Wall Street to ClimateTech, Biochar Carbon Credits, 50% Farmer Revenue Share, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Climate Tech, Women, Founder Story
