Imagine aligning every dollar you spend with your deepest values and contributing to a better world with each swipe of your debit card. This isn't a dream—it's the innovative vision of Kedar, co-founder of Karma Wallet, our esteemed guest who guides us through the creation of a FinTech platform that's revolutionizing ethical consumerism. His journey from evolutionary biology to the forefront of sustainable finance reveals how Karma Wallet measures the social and environmental outcomes of our purchases, enabling us to make impactful choices that resonate with our personal ethos.
As we peel back the layers of consumer transparency and trust, Karma Wallet emerges as a beacon for ethical brands and the conscious consumers of today—especially Gen Z, who crave authenticity. We delve into how Karma Wallet's platform provides a transparent stage for brands to communicate their sustainable narratives, supported by robust data and credible sources. This fosters a deep connection between consumers and companies, with every transaction reiterating the paradigm that money can indeed be a powerful tool for societal transformation.
The curtain closes with a call to action, inviting listeners to join the Karma Wallet community and use their financial power for positive change. Discover how you can suggest new brands and learn about Karma Wallet’s commitment as a B Corp and a member of 1% for the Planet. By engaging with Karma Wallet's mission on social media or simply by staying informed about their membership and debit card launch, you become part of a collective movement that wields every financial decision as a catalyst for a greener, more equitable world.
Join the waitlist to stay in the know when the Karma Wallet Card launches in early Spring 2024! You can learn more here, Karma Debit Card & App. The referral program will be coming soon.
Imagine aligning every dollar you spend with your deepest values and contributing to a better world with each swipe of your debit card. This isn't a dream—it's the innovative vision of Kedar, co-founder of Karma Wallet, our esteemed guest who guides us through the creation of a FinTech platform that's revolutionizing ethical consumerism. His journey from evolutionary biology to the forefront of sustainable finance reveals how Karma Wallet measures the social and environmental outcomes of our purchases, enabling us to make impactful choices that resonate with our personal ethos.
As we peel back the layers of consumer transparency and trust, Karma Wallet emerges as a beacon for ethical brands and the conscious consumers of today—especially Gen Z, who crave authenticity. We delve into how Karma Wallet's platform provides a transparent stage for brands to communicate their sustainable narratives, supported by robust data and credible sources. This fosters a deep connection between consumers and companies, with every transaction reiterating the paradigm that money can indeed be a powerful tool for societal transformation.
The curtain closes with a call to action, inviting listeners to join the Karma Wallet community and use their financial power for positive change. Discover how you can suggest new brands and learn about Karma Wallet’s commitment as a B Corp and a member of 1% for the Planet. By engaging with Karma Wallet's mission on social media or simply by staying informed about their membership and debit card launch, you become part of a collective movement that wields every financial decision as a catalyst for a greener, more equitable world.
Join the waitlist to stay in the know when the Karma Wallet Card launches in early Spring 2024! You can learn more here, Karma Debit Card & App. The referral program will be coming soon.
There's a lot of talk about people may spend more, or are willing to spend more, with brands that match their personal values, and what we saw is that people actually spend 30 to 50 percent more on companies that align with their value.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Impact Chats, a response to a different podcast sharing conversations with industry leaders leveraging business as a force for good. Welcome to the response to a different podcast where we dive into the journeys of businesses trailblazing sustainability and ethical practices. I'm Brittany Angelo, one of the co-hosts of the show. Today, we're honored to welcome Qadar, the co-founder of Karma Wallet, to our community of change makers. Karma Wallet, a sustainable FinTech company, offers a unique platform where every dollar spent by consumers is an opportunity to impact the world positively. With Qadar's diverse background, from a PhD in biology to data science and his passion for ethical consumerism, karma Wallet is redefining how we understand and influence our economic footprint. Join us as we explore Qadar's innovative approach to integrating sustainability into everyday financial decisions. Let's learn how Karma Wallet is creating a ripple effect of positive change in our world. Thanks for joining us today, hi Qadar. Welcome to Responsibly Different. To get us started, I'm thinking because I actually wasn't familiar with Karma Wallet before I reached out to you all. Can you share what your 30 second pitch is for our audience?
Speaker 1:
Gladly, yeah. So Karma Wallet, we think of ourselves as a sustainable or impact FinTech company, and for us what that means is we believe that every dollar that we spend as consumers is really an opportunity to change the world around us by sort of choosing ethical, sustainable companies, applying pressure to corporations which ultimately have more impact over society and the environment. So we've built an infrastructure and a system so that consumers can measure the social and environmental impact of every dollar that they spend.
Speaker 1:
And we do that primarily through a membership that comes with a debit card where, when you spend, you can see what are the companies that you're?
Speaker 2:
spending with actually doing in the world so cool, okay, love it Okay. So, before we dive too far into this conversation, I do want our guests to learn a little bit more about you, who you are, you as a person, and I think your background will really help people understand your point of view for this conversation. So what unique skills and perspectives are you bringing to the table, and how have those skills and perspectives helped you to create Karma Wallet?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a good question. So my background is very varied. I'm actually a scientist by training, so I have a PhD in biology. I studied evolutionary biology, some genetics, some computational biology, and took that and ended up being a data scientist for a little bit, working at a venture capital firm. So we worked with a lot of early stage companies on sort of building algorithms, you know, dealing with large, large data sets, and then after that I spent a little bit of time doing market research, so sort of looking at what are some of the emerging trends and technologies that startups are building.
Speaker 1:
How all of that is related to Karma Wallet is. I mean, essentially I started the company and I co-founded it with my father, who's been an entrepreneur in the past. I started the company because I was just frustrated as a consumer. Frankly, I believe we started it right after the global climate week in 2019. And personally I was seeing a lot of news about all these government officials are getting together and looking at new regulations and you know, of course that's important because regulations apply pressure to corporations as well. But I think I just felt frustrated that things are not changing and they're not changing fast enough and, at the end of the day. Companies respond to consumer demands and pressure, and I wished that I could know what my own money was doing in the world.
Speaker 1:
So, like I think of myself, at least, as trying to be an ethical consumer, just a good person in general, but, frankly, like other than for each of us, other than our jobs, I think where we spend our money is one of the biggest ways we actually create change in the world. But I just had no idea, right, I spend money at a brand and I'm like what did that actually do? So that's why we started the company is can we give some insight into? How are you actually influencing the world? And I think you know some of my data skills and data science skills and market research skills apply to that.
Speaker 2:
I love your thinking here and I love what you're saying because, yeah, I mean coming from this world of we're all consumers in our personal lives as well as our business lives. Yeah, we all are hoping that we're making real change, so I love that point of view. Thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:
So I guess, to be frank, I'm wondering have you all, like, been successful in this mission? And, like, what are your members doing? Are they helping move the mission forward?
Speaker 1:
That's a good question. So initially, when we started the company, our vision was to actually not to offer a direct consumer product. We wanted to just meet consumers where they are, meaning that if you have an existing financial institution that you have a relationship with, we would work with them and basically embed the data in your existing app. For a number of reasons, on the business side, that's just a bit of a slower moving machine working with large, large financial institutions, and I think we really wanted to offer something to consumers, to humans, that would be available sooner and is more actionable. So, yeah, that's where the membership and the debit card offering is coming from.
Speaker 1:
Before we launched that, we tested just a pilot free product where you could go to our website, connect your existing credit and debit cards and just see what is the social and environmental impact of my purchases, and we did see a lot of interest and we saw some meaningful behavioral change. So people were actually spending less at companies that were not as good and spending a bit more on companies that were doing better. So I have some of the details around that I can share it, but I don't want to get too data driven here.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, I mean, if you got some high level data, great. Also, people can look in the show notes and see all the data too there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I can share just a few stats. So one of the things we do is we calculate for each person, so we can dive into this later as well. You basically take a bunch of third party sources so we try not to make the decision about whether a company is good or not. We pull all the data that's out there together and just give you a view of what does this mean. Using those data points, we can then calculate what we call a karma score for each person. So, based on the companies that you spend with, what's your score essentially? And so we saw that I think over the course of a year or so, people's karma scores went up by like 12% on average.
Speaker 2:
Really cool.
Speaker 1:
So some meaningful change. And then I think the other interesting thing is and this is interesting for brands as well right, there's a lot of talk about people may spend more, or are willing to spend more, with brands that match their personal values, and what we saw is that people actually spend 30% to 50% more on companies that align with their values. Now, of course, this isn't by any means incentivizing consumerism, but I think what we're seeing is just that the spending that people are doing, when they see the data around it, around the impact of their spending, they start to shift that towards better companies.
Speaker 2:
You know, that's really reassuring to hear. So thanks for sharing that and I mean like I'm giggling, but truthfully, it's important to have this data and it's important that we have numbers that back up how we're feeling, so that we can also go to big business, to CEOs that are at Walmart, and say no, no, no. This does matter and here's some numbers that prove it. So thank you for doing this research to and collecting this data, because the numbers is often what moves and makes decisions. So I want to back up for a second and I jumped in and I said members and then you piggybacked off me and said membership. So I want to back up and say can you share what does it mean to be a member of Carmel Wallet? What does that look like? You mentioned the debit card.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, no-transcript. So at the end of the day, what we're doing is building a community. So when you're a member of Carmel Wallet, you're not just a card holder like you would be at another bank. Perhaps it's really like we want people to join who want to be a part of something bigger, want to be a part of a movement of consumers that are you know, we know that everyone's. You can't change your habits overnight and at the end of the day, like even I, sometimes I need something the next day and I just kind of have to order it off Amazon.
Speaker 2:
And you cringe every time you do.
Speaker 1:
I know.
Speaker 2:
Hey, I do it too. I just I needed something really quick and I was like, oh no, I'm gonna have to use Amazon. I died a little inside.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but I think just taking the step of saying, like, what is my impact? What does that look like? Can I make tiny little changes? And then you know, one of the things we do is we realize that it takes a lot of effort to do those things, so we create incentives to make it easier. We with the debit card. As a member, you get access to exclusive deals from ethical and sustainable companies.
Speaker 2:
And a lot of times these are you know, can be well known companies.
Speaker 1:
Some of your favorite brands are included in there. So we're really setting up a structure. We don't offer it now, but we'll also offer points and then you can redeem those for rewards when you buy from ethical and sustainable brands. So you know, say, being a member is being a part of a community that wants to create change and then having access to ways where it's easier to do that change.
Speaker 2:
I saw. Actually, one of the companies that you all work with is Ancestors, and I've had Ancestors on the podcast before. So I was like, oh, a little bit. I was like, oh, I must be interviewing good people if Carmel Watt has them on their website. So you gave me a little bit of reassurance there. So thanks.
Speaker 1:
Let's go to the other.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so a little while ago you spoke at the Sustainable Brands Conference that was out in San Diego, and I read that your presentation was focused on why digital natives favor brand values over sustainability claims. And, just so everybody knows, I'm using the term digital natives to mean a person who has grown up in the information age and I'm wondering can you give us a little bit more of the why, why you think, why you believe digital natives are favoring brand values?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely so. I was out in San Diego at the Sustainable Brands Conference. This was where a lot of leaders from brands that are sustainable or want to be sustainable come to figure out what do consumers want? How do we respond to that? And just as a little bit of background, if you will, I think a lot of the data and research that has been done around sustainable purchasing is focused on claims and a lot of times like packaging labeling. So the concept is you're walking through a supermarket and you see some sort of sustainable labeling on a package. Will you spend more?
Speaker 2:
or are you more?
Speaker 1:
likely to buy it. I think that helps. Certainly it matters For a little bit of an older generation. I think those people are willing to take that at face value. What has happened with people that have grown up on the internet? Is there so used to checking or going to social media or like so much information? Is available at their fingertips that seeing just a claim or packaging may not hold as much weight for them. So what we've learned and what we've seen is that especially Gen Z, but again digital natives in general, I think, increasingly understand that brands companies are made up of humans.
Speaker 1:
Humans aren't perfect, and so making these bold claims isn't really necessarily the best way to go about it. It's more about like here are the values that we care about as a brand, here's what we're working towards. We're not going to be perfect, but here's what we're doing. I think that tends to create more trust, more authenticity, more connection with the brand.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So when brands are doing this, we're hoping that then they see this meaningful growth that hopefully leads to a larger company and keeps them around. But I'm wondering what's the role that you see for these ethical companies to exist, and how can companies better showcase their ethical practices for consumers to be able to see that?
Speaker 1:
That's a good two good questions.
Speaker 2:
You're making it too easy.
Speaker 1:
The first one about, like, the role for ethical companies. I personally and I think this is a lot of the ethos behind Carmel wallet believe that money is really just a tool for change. First and foremost, it's a tool for change in our own lives personally, for having a home to live in or feeding your family or the basics, and then, beyond that, it's a tool for change in society and the world. So I think the role of ethical companies, frankly, is that every company should be an ethical company. Right, that you should view money not as an end goal in itself, but a tool. That's my personal view. The second question was about like, how can they communicate this? So I think there's a number of ways. Right, as a company, there's so much you can do from PR and communications and the way you tell your story and your website and through your social media.
Speaker 1:
I'm not going to get into all that here because I'm not a PR branding expert, but what I will talk about is that at Carmel wallet, we're creating almost like a. We're creating a space for brands to tell that story. So, on our website and this is publicly, freely available to everyone, and it will also be available on our app will be released very soon. We basically have what we call company profiles and these profiles much like you might see an employer's rating on Glassdoor or you know somebody's profile on Facebook it has information about the company, it has ratings about the company, it has recent news articles, has our sort of synthesized analysis of the company.
Speaker 1:
You want a quick takeaway of how we feel like this company is doing and then it also will in the future offer a space for those brands sort of show some content of their own. So we like to think of these company profiles as a space separate from your website that you can show what you're doing. We vet and validate everything that the brand says. So the consumer creates a little bit more trust. Because I know personally when I go to you know Nike's website, I'm sure they have a sustainability section and I'm sure it looks awesome, but I'm also like they're they're the ones crafting the story. How much of it can I really believe? So we want to create a bit of like a safe space for consumers to have that trust with brands also to communicate.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, I love that. This is kind of the direction that you went in, because I do want to take a moment to just really understand how you're getting all of this data, and I believe that some of it's coming from the UN SDGs. So I'm wondering if we can just kind of talk about how you're crafting this webpage and and where you're getting the information.
Speaker 1:
You know I mentioned earlier that we do our best not to act as any sort of decision maker about whether a brand is good or bad, or impactful or not.
Speaker 1:
There's so many amazing organizations out there doing this kind of work, so we rely primarily on those, and so we think of ourselves as an aggregator and a synthesizer and a communicator. We work with nearly 40 different data partners so those are nonprofits, ratings agencies, certificates to basically pull that data together, make it easy to understand as a consumer and then show that on the company profile. In addition to that, we also do a fair amount of essentially accessing and scraping of publicly available information. So any information that's on a company's website on its sustainability report is in the news, we pull that in and we show that to you, and we always show a link Right. So we never. We try to be transparent throughout the whole process. We show where data comes from, we give you a link directly to the article or the company's website and then moving forward.
Speaker 1:
One of the challenges is that all of these approaches I talked about work really well for larger brands that have the resources to go and pay for certificates, work with ratings agencies, do a bunch of PR or get press coverage.
Speaker 1:
For some of the smaller or even mid-sized brands, they just don't have the budget for that a lot of times, and so we are going to start working directly with them to essentially acquire or get survey data from them about what they're doing and then show that. So that'll all be done through, you know, with the help of sustainability experts, and we'll be transparent about how we collect the data, what questions we're asking, what it means. I think you mentioned the UN SGGs. What we do with all of the data that we collect is we map it to the sustainable development goals. So, again, in an effort to say, in an effort to basically say we're not really the ones making the decision, like the UN and all of the partners have done an amazing job coming up with these development goals. Then there's all this data about companies out there. Let's take all that data, sort of map it to those goals and then show you where the brands you care about are doing well or doing not so well.
Speaker 2:
Really cool. And just a little side story here. If people in the audience don't know what the UN SGGs are, go all the way back in the podcast, back to January. Last January and Ben and I did a great series on the UN SGGs so you can learn more information back there. Kodar, I'm curious how often are you adding new brands to your portfolio?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so currently we do it every month, and that's not just adding new brands but also updating the data for existing brands.
Speaker 2:
Oh cool.
Speaker 1:
So everything is updated every month. We do plan to do it more real time in the future, but that's kind of what we can manage right now. You'll notice that company scores change a little bit every month. If you sign up, you'll see that your personal data changes a little bit every month. So sometimes that's a reflection of you and your purchasing behavior, sometimes that's a reflection of the company behavior and we try to just communicate that as best we can.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that makes sense. And let's say that I'm a member and my favorite brand is not in your portfolio and I just need it there. Is there a way for me, as a member, to submit a new brand?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there is. I think right now the best way would be to send us an email. We have info at CarmelWalletio and we'll get on that right away. We will have a button in the future, essentially, so, if you see a brand you've bought from that we don't have data on, you can ask us to add it. But just for everyone's context, or for everyone's information, we're always going through the companies we don't have data on to have them. So, for example, every month we look at, okay, here all of the purchases that our members have made and here the companies that have had the most purchases that we don't have data for, and then we go, we basically prioritize and work our way through that list. So hopefully, over time, more and more of the companies that you buy from will have data.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, very cool. That's a really neat feature. Okay, so I absolutely love joining this. Carmelwallet is a B1, which means that you are a B Corp and a 1% for the planet member, just like Diego, which there's not many of us out there in the world, so we got to stick together. But I would love to hear kind of from you as like the founder of CarmelWallet, like what are the benefits that you see in both of these membership certifications, because they do look different and I'm not looking for you to explain the difference, but just why does CarmelWallet keep pursuing them?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's a great question. We talked about brand values earlier as it relates to certificates. I think certificates do still have some value when it comes to consumers or individuals, but frankly, I think a lot of the benefit that we see as a business is, aside from that third party validation, that we're acting ethically. It's a really great community of companies and of brands that are all aligned in the same direction, and so it makes it a lot simpler and easier to develop relationships, partnerships, just meet really great people working on great causes. So I think for me, that's probably what I get the most out of it.
Speaker 2:
Love that. All right, I'm just going to warn you, this last question is a doozy. I'm going to ask you the whole thing and then I can repeat some of the questions back. So I'm curious how you make sure that your purpose, carmel Wallet's purpose, drips through your marketing strategy, and I'm specifically looking to understand how are you communicating your purpose to your customers and your stakeholders, and is there some sort of a process that you go through to make sure that your marketing, your products and your service all align with your overall purpose?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's quite the question. That's like the million dollar question for every company, I think. I think, first and foremost, it's always an ongoing process, like it's an iterative process, as humans were always changing, as companies were always changing. So that's the first thing. And then I think the second piece would be and I actually talked about this at the Sustainable Brands Conference that when you think about brand values and the fact that especially digital natives understand humans are the ones behind companies, and when you think about social media and people, you know people don't spend hours and hours on TikTok looking at I don't know landscape imagery. It's humans. That there's videos of people doing funny stuff a lot of the time.
Speaker 1:
I think what I'm getting at is that increasingly, personally, I'm realizing that we will always try to put our humans first, in a way that, even as a company for example, being on this podcast, right, it's an opportunity for me to just show people who I am and who somebody behind the company is. So when we think about values, I think it starts from what are the values of the founders? What are the values of the rest of our team? How does that turn into company values? And then let's just communicate that like humans talking to other humans. And I don't know if that's like the expert marketing wisdom you were looking for, but that's what I've got.
Speaker 2:
Well, you already told me that you're not the marketing guru behind the operation, so you're fine. Well, qatar, thank you so much for being on the show today. I love your personal perspective. I love what Carmel Wallet stands for. As our audience leaves us, I'm just wondering are there next steps that they should do? How can they get in touch with you?
Speaker 1:
Absolutely so I would say the first thing, of course, is go and follow us on our socials. I think they'll be linked in the show notes, so that'll be the easiest thing. Stay tuned for the release of our debit card and membership. We will have a referral program, so if you have friends or family that would like to create a better future, create a better world with their dollars, we will give you some incentives for letting them know. And I think that's it for now. Just stay up to date with what we're doing. We feel like there's a huge opportunity here to bring people together for a good cause and use money the way that it can be and the way that it should be.
Speaker 2:
I love that and, of course, we will update our audience on all the exciting things as they happen for you all. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time and educating our audience. So we will talk with you soon.
Speaker 1:
Awesome.
Speaker 2:
Thanks, Brittany. Thank you for joining us on this insightful episode with Kadar from Karma Wallet. This forward-thinking method of incorporating sustainability into finance exemplifies his innovative approach our world requires. We hope this discussion not only enlightens you, but also inspires actionable steps towards a more sustainable future. In your professional and personal financial decisions, Remember every choice we make can contribute to a healthier planet. Until next time, be responsibly different.