“We Are Moving Away From A Shareholder Economy To Stakeholder Economy”, Says Christian Benigni, Co-founder and CEO, MyyTake ESG Global

In an interaction with Urvi Shrivastav, Editorial Lead BW CFO; Christian Benigni, Co-founder and CEO, MyyTake ESG Global, speaks about the business the start-up is engaged in, inclusivity, and its related projects, issues around sustainability, fundraising, and business expansion.

Urvi Shrivastav: What is the business model of Myytake, and what industry is it looking to disrupt?

Christian Benigni: We have three guiding principles in our business: one is called amplification, another one is impact, and the third one is measurement. Those are the three principles for a 360-degree service provision. It sounds easy but it is quite revolutionary in terms of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) compliance. At this moment in time, we do not see anyone providing a revolutionary service like this, where these two things are brought together. We are working as a one-stop service provider and have been able to disrupt almost all the industries. We are already working in the healthcare, and agriculture sector, while we are also trying to get into organisation and manufacturing verticals. It is the quality of the data and the sustainability of data in the corporate world that binds all of this together. We intend to disrupt not only these domains but a lot more.

Urvi Shrivastav: What are some of the projects undertaken in the public sector and public sector by Myytke?

Christian Benigni: One of the projects we are working on is a menstrual health campaign. We are trying to help 100 million girls not fall into period poverty in the upcoming five to seven years. For this, we are reaching out to NGOs and some local governments, via whom we can help create awareness around menstrual health while implementing and measuring the outcomes. We are trying to amplify this by collecting the amount of money required to create a five-to-seven-year program. The acceptance by NGOs, and other organisations providing support and capital has been amazing. We are in the market to raise anything between $110-150 Million to help this initiative come alive.

Urvi Shrivastav: How important is ESG as a metric to draw in money from investors, especially as a start-up?

Christian Benigni: We are moving away from a shareholder economy to a stakeholder economy. Now it is needed to take corporate, social, and societal interests along parallelly, to the extent that we can create awareness, as is being done in our menstrual health campaign for example. Money becomes more easily obtainable as more lives are being touched, the outcomes are more sustainable and more scalable. We are hoping that might make a huge difference.

Urvi Shrivastav: Are we expecting to see a Myytke IPO sometime down the line?

Christian Benigni: We are taking our first steps in the business space. Myytake is already taking its first steps in the sustainability space. We are now trying to find out what the markets as a whole think about our very proposition. We will try and test and see how far we can grow.

Urvi Shrivastav: What are the expansion plans for Myytake?

Christian Benigni: We are having two kinds of expansion plans; we are testing waters in India to see where we are going to be active. Secondly, we have to chart out industries we are yet to disrupt, which will also guide our thinking in national expansion. We are particularly excited about opening an office in Europe. We have picked the Netherlands as our global representation, mainly because sustainability is an integral part of how the country functions. 80 per cent of the Netherlands is below sea level, so we may understand what climate change means. It has already drawn the attention of change-makers and governmental support. A lot of the banks are providing capital, several public and private funds are standing by to invest in this direction. If we can be a strong player in this particular market, a lot of the wisdom and information can be imported in India and repurposed via our 360- degree vision