Emirates NBD and Erguvan successfully launch pilot carbon management solution for regional SMEs

3 Min | 28 November 2023

Erguvan to launch its carbon management SaaS product “Azalt” in early 2024
Follows Emirates NBD’s recent investment in climate FinTech venture Erguvan
Pilot project launched with EKOS Electric in Türkiye
Program to include UAE SMEs in next phase

Dubai, UAE, 28 November 2023: Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye) region, has announced that Erguvan, a climate and financial technology venture it recently invested in, has successfully launched a pilot program to deploy its carbon management solution, “Azalt” among regional SMEs.

The proof-of-concept project was conducted with EKOS Electric, an SME client of DenizBank, a fully owned subsidiary of Emirates NBD Group. Azalt emerged as a vital tool for EKOS Electric, aiding in identification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission hotspots and implementing data-driven emission reduction campaigns.

The successful pilot highlights the significant potential of Erguvan’s SaaS product Azalt, in supporting businesses and their financial partners in understanding and mitigating emissions. Emirates NBD and Erguvan announce plans to expand the programme to UAE-based SMEs to measure, reduce and offset their GHG emissions.

SMEs significantly contribute to GHG emissions, however, are unaware of their carbon footprint due to low awareness and organizational capacity for sustainability and a lack of cost-effective digital tools for climate action with easy deployment and use. In this context, Erguvan aims to equip SMEs with a user-friendly digital tool to initiate their journey into emissions accounting and reporting, ultimately driving emissions reduction. The climate FinTech startup also aims to establish linkages between the decarbonization efforts of SMEs and sustainable finance instruments to accelerate progress.

To be launched officially in early 2024, Erguvan’s carbon management SaaS product Azalt is designed to streamline data collection and management efforts, enhance data reliability, and accurately measure, reduce, and offset a company’s carbon footprint (i.e., Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions). Azalt also offers an efficient and scalable carbon accounting infrastructure for financial institutions, enabling a strong foundation for the sustainable products they offer.

Vijay Bains, Group Chief Sustainability Officer and Group Head of ESG at Emirates NBD, said: “With the intensified focus on climate action, it is imperative for financial institutions to offer and implement advanced digital tools to meet the evolving needs of businesses and individuals. The introduction of Erguvan’s carbon management solution underscores the bank's commitments to being a catalyst for the green transition in the MENAT region.”

He added: “Emirates NBD aims to bridge the digital gap and empower its customers in the region to embrace more sustainable practices, aligning with global environmental goals. By offering digital resources that facilitate ESG management, Emirates NBD seeks to aid its clients to reduce their environmental footprint, thereby contributing to the bank's broader climate goals and reinforcing its position as a responsible and forward-thinking financial institution.”

Barış Balat, Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder of Erguvan, stated: “A driving factor behind our partnership with Emirates NBD is the essential role financial institutions play in the decarbonization of business sectors. As financial institutions address the critical issue of financed emissions by setting targets and making commitments, there is an escalating emphasis on data quality to ensure accuracy of decarbonization across lending portfolios and other asset classes. Erguvan’s Azalt solution provides a user-friendly carbon management platform to businesses of all sizes while fulfilling the emerging requirement in the financial sector to collect high-quality, actionable emissions data. We believe that at scale deployment of our solutions will also help bridge the data gap in the MENAT region and accelerate climate action.”

Tunahan Akbaş, Vice President at EKOS Electric, said: “We firmly believe that an integral part of our commitment to both our esteemed clients and the broader society lies in understanding and actively reducing the environmental impacts arising from our operations. This collaboration and the deployment of Erguvan's Azalt software marks our company's inaugural step in quantifying our carbon footprint, which we pledge to vigilantly monitor and manage. Through this initiative, we pinpointed key emission hotspots, setting the stage for direct emission reduction measures. This proof-of-concept project also allowed us to engage with DenizBank in a new way, fostering a rejuvenated discourse around decarbonization and its associated financial avenues.”

Verda Beril Yüzer Oğuz, Executive Vice President & Head of FI and ESG Coordination at DenizBank, remarked: “DenizBank is deeply committed to accelerating the green transition in Türkiye. To break new ground in this domain, we highly value the opportunities to work with promising start-ups, and NEOHUB (DenizBank's subsidiary) continues to play a fundamental role providing this access. Our collaboration with Erguvan has particularly been helpful in making tangible strides in decarbonization and this proof-of-concept project executed with EKOS Electric paints a vivid picture of the larger, bank-wide ambitions we harbor for climate action."

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