Name: Namrata Sandhu
Company: Vaayu
Position: Co-Founder and CEO
Website: https://vaayu.tech
About Namrata Sandhu
Namrata Sandhu is Co-Founder and CEO of Vaayu, the world’s first automated software empowering retail brands and businesses to track and cut their carbon and environmental impact in real-time. Vaayu created retail’s largest and most accurate impact database, which is continually evolving to power reduction at scale.
Leveraging proprietary AI and machine learning technology, Vaayu calculates impacts—such as carbon emissions, water and waste across product, packaging and logistics—to visualize hotspots and help lead partners toward more sustainable choices. Vaayu brings together experts across retail, tech, LCA and legislation, enabling partners to navigate the regulatory landscape and build out scenarios for setting and tracking targets.
Namrata co-founded Vaayu in December 2020 to deliver much-needed software and data to power real-time reduction at scale. Her 20-year career spanned the Arcadia Group and leading global retailer Zalando, causing her to find this critical gap in the market.
Retail is responsible for 25% of global carbon emissions and the fashion sector is on track to generate 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon emissions in 2030. Existing impact calculation models generated generic spend-based data, and while Scope 3 accounts for over 90% of retail emissions on average, offering the greatest opportunity for reduction, it is also the most difficult to measure.
With activity-based models and insights into all Scopes, Vaayu is helping to ensure the success of reduction strategies, decarbonize the retail industry and decelerate climate change. Namrata’s goal with Vaayu is to put environmental impact at the forefront of decision-making and power global carbon literacy, changing shopping behavior.
Since inception, Vaayu has raised $13 million in seed round funding. Through global partnerships, Vaayu is pioneering research into the climate impact potential of circular business models, calculating product footprints that arm millions of consumers worldwide with robust impact data to guide more sustainable consumption, and delivered the largest-ever primary dataset on the climate impact of shopping second-hand fashion online.
Vaayu onboarded more than 100 global partners, including Klarna, Vinted, Mastercard, On, Vestiaire Collective, New Balance, MISSOMA, Axel Arigato, ASKET, Ace & Tate, Veja, Otrium and Redcare Pharmacy.
As the only carbon accounting software specializing in retail, Nam’s ambition is to support brands and retailers in collaboratively driving down the industry’s emissions at scale. Under her leadership, Vaayu wins many awards and recognitions for its expertise in AI, LCA, circular economy and leadership.
Nam won TechRound’s BAME50 2023, appeared on Bloomberg and CNN News18, is featured in Vogue Business, Business of Fashion (BoF), Fast Company, Interline and Drapers, and is invited to speak at events like Climate Week NYC and BoF Professional Summit.
Vaayu supports female leadership and diversity. 56% of team members are women, and Vaayu operates with 80% female leadership and 85% female board. Nam recognizes the importance of different cultural backgrounds and what these broad perspectives can bring to the workplace. 58% of Vaayu’s international team identifies as BAME, and Vaayu is proud to build its team located across 17 different countries, comprising 27 nationalities from the Arctic Circle to the bottom of Latin America.
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