Mega Green Accelerator: Saudi Arabia-Based Ahya Helps Enterprises Achieve Net-Zero With Accuracy, Transparency, And Environmental Robustness "Solving climate change and building a sustainability business is a long journey, which will require immense patience, and the ability to educate those around you, whilst constantly learning and iterating."
By Tamara Pupic
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The Mega Green Accelerator is an initiative by PepsiCo, one of the world's largest food and beverage companies, SABIC, a Riyadh-headquartered global diversified chemicals company, and 12 other strategic partners. In its inaugural 2024 edition, it selected eight startups to participate in the program, including Ahya, a Saudi Arabia-based startup that created unified AI–powered platform for scaling climate action.
"Ahya is the first consolidated climate software and artificial intelligence (AI) venture globally," declares founder Salaal Hasan, who leads a 20-strong team at his startup to help enterprises achieve net-zero with accuracy, transparency, and environmental robustness.
Hasan proudly points out that since its launch in 2023, Ahya has gone on to scale its operations to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, where it works with partners ranging from multinationals, financial institutions and export businesses. However, Hasan admits it wasn't easy to get to this point. "The biggest challenge when building a climate-tech business was incentivizing a behavioral change in enterprises to move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and focus on climate change as a core pillar of their business, which starts with a basis of measurement for what you intend to change," he points out.
Ahya's operating system (AhyaOS) is an AI-powered operating system that allows enterprises to measure, analyze, reduce, and report greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Besides overcoming all potential limitations caused by a lack of data, it also allows for internal and external collection, and provides a single platform for managing an enterprise's sustainability data. AhyaOS, in turn, makes use of a digital closed–loop voluntary carbon marketplace called Tawazun, which allows enterprises to buy, sell, and trade voluntary emission reductions (i.e. carbon offsets) for emissions that cannot be reduced or avoided. Tawazun thus tackles market access and fragmentation challenges faced by MENAP enterprises, and it also allows them to generate revenue, while providing critical climate financing to global projects.
When it comes to industry recognitions, Ahya was among the candidates shortlisted for the TechSprint award, a global initiative aimed at promoting innovation in scaling sustainable finance and combating climate change staged by the Central Bank of the UAE, the Bank for International Settlements, the Emirates Institute of Finance, and the Presidency of the 28th edition of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28). The company has also since gone on to be nominated for the 2024 editions of the global environmental award called The Earthshot Prize, as well as the Zayed Sustainability Prize, which is the UAE's global award for sustainability and humanitarianism.
Despite such achievements, Hasan says that the lack of funding remains one of the main challenges for MENAP startups like his that are focused on the sustainability domain. "Ever since COP28, there have been a lot of policies and directives in Saudi Arabia and the UAE focused on sustainability, but there has been a lag in domestic venture markets and risk capital that is available to venture funds to support this," Hasan says. "With the high inflation rates and global markets still waiting for a correction, venture funds in the US and the European Union (EU) have yet to take the leap of faith on MENAP climatetech."
Zooming into Saudi Arabia, Hasan notes that while the country has unlocked a lot of funding for startups, the majority of it is directed only towards fintech and e-commerce ventures. "The fact that sustainability is part of the first pillar of Vision 2030 has yet to lead to specialized venture funds and more focus on this space in Saudi Arabia," he says. "Our approach has been to publish our opinions on key sustainability policies and problems to solve in our markets, collaborating with government and academia. If Saudi Arabia is to achieve its national determined contribution (reduction target) of 278 million tons of carbon dioxide per annum, then climate-focused funds and programs that look inward in the country, and not invest only in foreign markets, are an economic need."
In such a landscape, Hasan believes that there is a need for localized specialized funds to step up and take the lead—and he's seeing evidence of that happening as his startup participates in the Mega Green Accelerator program. "The Mega Green Accelerator is tackling this in working with leading capital allocators in Venture Souq, Dubai Future District Fund, Shurooq Partners, and others," he points out. "Yet, the thrust must come from sovereigns and family offices, as the time for a market correction towards sustainability and a green premium on sustainable products is running out."
To that end, Hasan points out that the Mega Green Accelerator is playing a critical role in providing a platform for regional entrepreneurs to demonstrate climate change as an innovation opportunity that every business should be proactively working on. With regards to Ahya's future plans, Hasan says that the startup is now getting ready for the commercial launch of its core products, AhyaOS and Tawazun, by the end of 2024. "This is backed by strong partnerships with US and EU players, including artificial intelligence giant Nvidia, carbon registries, emission factor databases, and cloud service providers, as well as local partnerships with sovereign funds and financial markets," Hasan adds. "We plan to grow to 50 full-time employees by next June, especially in Saudi Arabia. We are on track to achieve a triple growth in revenue, over the coming year with 67% recurring revenue, working with 60 enterprise clients across the MENAP."
'TREP TALK: Ahya founder Salaal Hasan shares his tips for entrepreneurs in the sustainability domain
Think long-term "Solving climate change and building a sustainability business is a long journey, which will require immense patience, and the ability to educate those around you, whilst constantly learning and iterating. Short-term pessimism and long-term optimism is key, always focusing on conservative approach to assumptions, whilst focusing relentlessly on growth."
A unified approach is key "Getting businesses to think beyond the bottom-line requires them to have an incentive, and financial institutions and consumers must play their part with lower financing rates for sustainable projects, and higher pricing/ premium demand for green products. Our generation will not circumvent the unavoidable truth- climate change is a problem that can only be solved through a unified approach."
