CO2 Cards - Working to Reduce Carbon Emissions

So hello everyone, my name is Yavor and I'm coming from Sofia, Bulgaria. And the company I founded recently last year is named CO2 Cards. Actually, our mission is to spur the low carbon economy transition by providing much needed funding to carbon offsetting projects. So what we do, we help you compensate your carbon footprint by supporting green projects, reduce the same amount. So I've been working on this market like in the last 6 years, and I know there are a lot of struggles, a lot of pain points in it, but recently we switched all our operations into the carbon emissions offsetting. Which is a UN-developed mechanism to support climate change mitigations. So the service we provide is that we can calculate and help you easily offset your CO2 emissions at a fair price. Talking about the market and the opportunity, we find it a perfect moment to launch this business. We've tried this before and the market was not ready. But right now we have several factors that really incentivize us to go as fast as possible. So there is a public awareness momentum right now, like majority of the interviewed people or corporate managers say that they are for acting on climate change. There is also a Paris Agreement implementation which will start globally, already started, so they're going to be taking measures on every level to reduce CO2. There is also a recent rise of travel and event tech, which we will definitely use, which will allow you to scale and reach global travelers. And Trump is also in our favor. I could explain it later why. So the current carbon emissions offsetting market is valued at $600 million, and 90% out of it comes from corporate social responsibility programs, while the personal social responsibility, as we call it, takes about 10% share. And this is— it shows rapid growth in the last years, on average like 30-35% annual growth rate. So if you look at the market size, if you look at the value of the transportation emissions, it's $60 billion. Actually, it is formed by all our transportation services. For example, the aviation industry's emissions are valued at $8 billion. We have identified like 175 million passengers willing to be green and pay for the service. Which could bring us half a billion in annual revenue when we reach this number. As well, like, the biggest share of the transportation emissions comes from the road transportation, and the offsetting among this industry is actually not popular. No one is taking care of it, neither governments nor private initiatives. That's why we have some estimations here but we highly bet that this can be developed hugely. So let me tell you about how our product looks like. Since we are pre-launch and we have developed mostly APIs and backend systems, this is a screen of how our offering should look like through our distribution channels or customers. For example, this is an Airbnb hotel booking page where you can choose to sleep green or relevantly fly green, travel green, etc. Do it easily without leaving the comfort of—

I want to just be conscious of time here. You're already in 4 minutes versus 3 minutes. So if you can get to the last couple key slides and we'll wrap it up.

Okay, so last year we started development of the tech side. We got a few pilots on board. We did a good strategic partnership with a company, with industry leader as well, and we also have presented on some European ventures and other climate-related venues. Our business model is quite simple. We take commission on each transaction, we direct funding to green projects, and we collect them from all our customer base.

Okay, we're gonna wrap it up now because you've gone over by a couple minutes. So thank you very much. Awesome. CO2 cards. So, um, I'll ask that the presenters coming up try and keep to the 3-minute time because it's really here for the feedback. And I'd also ask that everyone in the audience, if you have questions, pop them into the chat. I'll try and bring them to the presenter. If not, we'll ask that the presenter answer them once he's finished with feedback. Sunil, you seem to have a little bit better connectivity. Do you want to start with any questions or feedback to get started, and then we'll go to you, Jason. Welcome back.

Sure, okay. Well, Yavar, that was a good presentation, very clear, good slides. I guess you were rushed at the beginning. Your last two slides were kind of interesting to me because you were— and they're not on the screen right now— but you were mentioning by name some of the corporate partners, brands that you're looking to work with. And, you know, I've actually been thinking when I use when I use my airline points card, and when I, you know, I'm always encouraged to do some more offsetting, some more socially responsible activities that relate to my CO2 activities just from traveling or commuting or whatnot. But I've always wondered what is the level of uptake on that? How many people are actually donating or taking part in these programs? Is this something that we can sort of quantify or segment by age segments, millennials, older people, like how much uptake is there on this? Or is it really just a good idea?

Yeah, thank you for the question. Actually, we have like relevant data for aviation industry where anywhere between 5 and 10% of the travelers choose to travel green. And it includes all age groups. I mean, It doesn't differentiate much from, I mean, everyone between 25 and 55 is in our target group, actually.

Jason, I know you had still some connectivity problems, but do you have any questions next? I certainly have a few myself, and there's some in the chat.

Yeah, I mean, some of them, from my standpoint, I usually get into traction and kind of your path to revenue. And I know you ran out of time, so I thought your presentation format was very slick, very organized, very clean, as some little mention, but obviously ran out of time. So you started to answer some of the questions around traction. How far have you gotten along your beta test? Do you have any kind of premier customer segments that have started to kind of pick up the product and run with it, and even if it's in beta form? And what kind of responses have you gotten?

Okay, okay, sure. So the initial industries, because our product is— it can serve different industries and sub-industries. We go to like B2B, B2B2C channel, and we'll also target later B2C channel. We have strong business plan on that as well. So right now, like the beachhead market are all those industries who accept online payments for travel, like travel agencies. Event organizers are the second because they accumulate huge turnover based on transportation. And so those are our pilots, as well as event organizers as offline business. So, so far we have pilots with a mobile ticketing app which is used for ferry transportation and public transportation. We have 2 travel agencies in process of implementing our solution as well. They will go live at the end of Q1. And we also have like a pipeline of 20 event organizers that are— some of them have signed LOEs or we are in process of forming the contracts. So those are the industries we are targeting right now and we are talks with some of the global leaders in ticketing systems as well, making special offers for them, as well as taxi companies like Uber, like GetTaxi, or other car sharing apps. Gotcha.

Second real quick question is, $500K for 18 months just doesn't seem like enough to me.

Well, they're in Sofia.

Okay.

Yeah, but still, it's not Silicon Valley.

You still got a lot of marketing. There's still a lot of work to be done, not just on the product, but marketing and getting it out there. So what makes you confident about $500K for 18 months?

Okay. So I mean, this $500K actually is a number which comes with a little bit traction. So that's why, but this is the amount we're raising actually, because we want to have 1 year of traction and then do a series round or something. But this is going to be enough for us since we pay less here in Bulgaria for development and also for—

I'm reading some of the comments in the chat and a lot of it centers around the price, right? So, um, and, uh, I don't want to surmise all the questions. Maybe you can clarify. This will be the last question for you. If, uh, if it— how does this change what a consumer pays for a service, right? So Is it 10% more expensive? Is it— how does that work? Or, because I know you're going B to B to C, so what does it affect at the C step, at the end of that 3-step process?

Actually, our pricing is like quite good. We're among the most affordable solutions on the market. And In the— I mean, there are good enough margins included so far because we're trying to do retail, which rises our transaction costs.

But I mean, are you looking at it like, let's say I wanted to take a green taxi or a green flight? Is it a small amount like $0.50 or is it like 5%? How does the pricing work?

You're going to be amazed how affordable it is. Like a taxi ride is about 20 cents, or a carbon-neutral flight continental is about $3, or overseas is anywhere between $5 and $10. But 10 cents or 20 cents for a taxi ride, this is, I mean, something not to mention that is a cost, right?

Absolutely, much more affordable than I originally thought. All right, well, thank you