2024-11-16
17 分钟Shilpika Gautam talks about her journey from the trading floor to environmental work. She discusses how a transformative – and record-breaking – experience paddleboarding the Ganges catalysed the founding of Opna, a greentech company focused on accelerating climate action. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs.
The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business.
I'm Tom Edwards.
This week, the world's attention is on Baku, where leaders and delegates at the COP 29 climate gathering in Azerbaijan are convening to address the urgent challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Among the agenda items, delegates have approved new standards to regulate and expand the global carbon market, a critical move for financing and incentivising climate action worldwide.
One company already working to accelerate these efforts is opna, a climate financing firm that helps companies to invest directly in high quality carbon removal projects, fostering impactful and measurable climate action.
Omnis founder and CEO Shilpika Gautam stopped by Midori House to talk about the challenge of scaling climate solutions effectively.
Shilps, as she's usually known, began by telling me about the start of the journey.
I had just picked up this water stand and paddling in Little Venice and I was like, well, this part is cool, I should do something with it.
And I by total coincidence met somebody called Paul who had just come back from India and had worked on a lake in the eastern part of India helping clean up the water, working with local communities using the power of standard paddling.
I was like, I think I'm going to go do something in India.
And I saw this magazine.
It seems so wild, but it just kind of was meant to be.
I saw this magazine cover which had the Ganges on its cover and it said the dichotomy of the holy and the profane.
So essentially pointing to the fact that the Ganges in India is this incred, incredibly important river.
Super Holy supports 500 million people, but it's also one of the dirtiest, most polluted water bodies on the planet.
It's like, well, I guess I'm going to go paddle that river.
And I said it to Paul and Paul's like, whoa, whoa, you can barely swim.
I'm like, well, not going to stop me.
And then, you know when you put something out in the world and you talk to enough people about it and you talk to people who want you to succeed, and everybody was like, whoa.