This is a guest post by Richard Armstrong who is an early stage investor in many startups in both SE Asia and globally. Plus Richard has cofounded several companies.
Guest Author: Richard Armstrong
Today I figured i’d talk about a company I personally backed. And it’s a company I am very excited about.
In the fight against climate change, accurate and reliable data is essential for effective action. Nika.eco is at the forefront of this battle, leveraging advanced AI to provide geospatial climate data and carbon modeling.
You’re probably thinking… “Man… that is a mouthful. What the heck is that?”
Well, let me do my best to explain.
So what do they do?
Nika.eco offers services designed to optimize the potential of nature-based carbon projects:
- Prospecting: Basically they can scan biomass for potential impact thus focusing the user on the areas with the highest potential return.
- Illustration: Animations are used to visualize the benefits of carbon reduction projects.
- Prediction: Using the latest technologies like Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technologies, they are able to create pretty accurate estimates on the carbon potential and return of projects.
- Biodiversity Assessment: For markets with mandatory biodiversity integrity checks, such as the Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), Nika.eco is able to perform these biodiversity assessments on behalf of clients.
- Risk Assessment: Nika.eco evaluates environmental projects for a wide set of risks, ensuring they are sustainable long term.
- Monitoring: they continue to monitor projects on an ongoing basis for clients, alerting them of any issues or major changes.
Leveraging AI
Nika.eco‘s use of AI and remote sensing technologies sets it apart from other climate data providers.
The integration of AI/ML technology with traditional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) superpowers these older technologies and gives them capabilities they never had before.
In additional to enabling them to scale much easier as less human involvement is involved.
Adept at Leveraging Cloud
The team is very good at plugging their technology into cloud infrastructure to enable better scaling.
Johann mentioned “most machine learning solutions in the market use locally based compute, which limits the model’s ability to scale, or they run very inefficiently on the cloud due to nonoptimal cloud architectures.
Our proprietary geospatial machine learning infrastructure automatically configures optimal resources to ensure your model is scalable and built efficiently. This significantly increases the time it takes to complete and improves cost structures.”
Fast, easy to use, and accessible
Traditional carbon models usually take anywhere from six to eight months to train and build by industry standards. Whereas the team has been able to help customers achieve this within a month.
Part of their vision is also taking this advanced technology and making it very easy to use and affordable.
For example they are building a standalone SaaS product, which will lower the costs and technical barriers to developing other types of climate models.
Case Studies and Testimonials
One good example of using Nika.eco‘s technology is how Carbon Growth Partners used it for their mangrove projects.
The AI identified issues that improved carbon accounting accuracy. After which, Dr. Chris Gillies (Head of Origination at Carbon Growth Partners) noted that the project’s viability improved drastically.
Similarly, Vida Carbon leveraged Nika.eco‘s AI feasibility technology to evaluate investment opportunities and forecast specific risks, aiding communities in need.
The team
Founded by Lawrence Xiao and Johann Wah, Nika.eco aims to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds in climate tech through technology.
Their tools are designed to accelerate project pipelines, providing industry-leading models and satellite data to support environmental sustainability.
Lawrence has a background as an ex-AWS engineer, where he worked on building various cloud infrastructure and software layers for the Singaporean government.
Johann Wah, the President, was previously part of the AWS startup team and has experience in building ranking algorithms as an analyst, as well as founding a small business in sustainable procurement
I’m excited for the team and what’s ahead.
