Team AgriEco Hub and Team 3 (NatureDelta) have emerged victorious in this year’s hackathon, an event held in collaboration with NayaOne and coinciding with the Sustainable Finance Live 2024 conference.
The Sustainable Finance Live 2024 Hackathon took place from September 27 to October 10, featuring teams divided into ‘emerging’ and ‘established’ categories. Participants developed their products and pitches over this two-week period.
Key themes addressed by the participating teams included the utilization of geospatial data and AI, data fusion and large language models (LLMs), innovations in demand for impact-oriented financial instruments, sustainable agriculture for enhancing ecosystems, and nature risk reporting.
The panel of judges and mentors included renowned experts such as:
– Nigel Greenhill, Director at Hill Stone Wood
– Mitesh Soni, Client Executive at AWS
– Richard Conway, CEO of Elastacloud
– David Gristwood, Freelance Consultant, formerly of Microsoft
– Sarah Sinclair, Founder of Change Gap
– Darshna Shah, Solution Lead at Elastacloud
– Chryssi Chorafa, Director at StarLiX
– Jean-Guillaume de Maneville, Fintechs & Financial Sponsors at Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking
– Giles D’Souza, Strategic Business Lead at Planet
– Andy Bennet, Space Lead at Innovate UK KTN
– Priyank Patwa, Director of ESG Digital, Data, and Analytics at Deloitte UK
– Isabelle Chatel de Brancion, Business and Innovation Lead at Geovation, Ordnance Survey
Amrit Satpathy and Ambar Vitelli played a vital role in facilitating the 2024 Hackathon on behalf of NayaOne. Karan Jain, CEO of NayaOne, commended the hackathon as a catalyst for innovation, stating, “We’re thrilled that NayaOne’s hackathon platform fostered significant progress this year, driving the development of new financial instruments focused on Natural Capital.”
### Winners in the Emerging Category
The emerging category was dominated by Team 3 (NatureDelta), composed of Juan Sabuco, Qiu Wong, Nell Agate Tsui, Max Neri, Jean Joy, and Nicola Ranger. Their innovative platform addresses a critical gap by enabling accurate evaluations of nature-related financial risks. The solution incorporates nature data to assist businesses and investors in making informed, sustainable choices.
Using Brazil’s rich biodiversity as a case study, the team articulated their platform’s functionality. “The biodiversity found here underpins numerous ecosystem services. Our tool evaluates and translates these services into financial metrics—an essential step in integrating nature and biodiversity into financial decision-making,” they explained.
The platform is designed to assess dependencies and impacts while identifying risk hotspots, highlighting the value of ecosystem services at stake across critical sectors like agriculture and manufacturing.
Judges were particularly impressed by Team 3’s collaborative approach, with Richard Peers noting their ability to swiftly coalesce around a clear use case and effectively demonstrate the value derived from data utilization.
Nell Agate Tsui shared her exhilaration regarding the win, stating, “Winning in the Emerging category is thrilling! We are immensely grateful to NayaOne for their tools and the Sustainable Finance Live team for their mentorship, which fostered the development of our nature-related solutions.”
She emphasized the learning and innovation fostered during the hackathon’s two weeks, recognizing it as a pivotal opportunity for conceptualizing solutions linking nature transition risks to macroeconomic impacts.
### Winners in the Established Category
In the established category, AgriEco Hub, represented by Afri GIS, claimed the top prize. The team, which included CF Haasbroek, Christopher Ueckerman, Dicky Thomas, Eddie Griffiths, Liesel Lange, Martemie Le Roux, Nicolas Kemp, and Tondani Phaswana, focused on creating a platform that promotes sustainable farming practices, optimizes resource use, and enhances access to sustainability-linked funding.
Their initiative connects commercial farmers, smallholders, and financial institutions, facilitating profitability, resource efficiency, and collaboration. The AgriEco Hub platform employs advanced technologies such as weather forecasting, GIS mapping, and real-time environmental data to support intelligent decision-making, enabling stakeholders to harness accurate insights for sustainable outcomes.
Peering into their work, Richard Peers remarked on the team’s impressive output within a limited timeframe, praising the depth and clarity they brought to their presentations.
In their reflection, the AgriEco Hub team expressed their excitement: “Collaborating over these ten days has been an inspiring experience. We are thrilled to have won and are eager to launch our solution. The hackathon allowed us to focus on research and development, creating a bridge between smallholders, commercial farmers, and financial institutions to ensure green finance reaches those who need it most, while also promoting biodiversity and managing financial risks.”