EcoMatcher, a provider of corporate tree-planting technology solutions, has an ambitious business plan of growing as many as a billion trees by the end of 2030, Founder & CEO Bas Fransen says.
He told The Story Thailand that over the past three years, his company has planted 2.5 million trees in many countries and is set to double that number by the end of this year.
In Thailand alone, EcoMatcher has planted between 500,000 and a million trees, mainly in northern and southern parts of the country, according to Fransen.
Reforestation projects play a crucial role in combating climate change by offsetting carbon emissions and supporting biodiversity. A tree absorbs approximately 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide each year, helping to remove nearly one ton of CO2 over its lifetime.
Cloud-based platform
EcoMatcher is working with its tree-planting partners in 14 nations in Africa, South America, Middle East, and Asia where trees are planted by local farmers, according to the CEO.
In Thailand, the company works with an organization specializing in planting trees. The unnamed Thai partner has tree nurseries and works with landowners and local farmers in planting trees.
“Once they plant a tree, they need to capture it with an app which we have developed called ‘TreeCorder’. The moment they take a picture of the tree, we take GPS coordinates,” he said.
In addition to automatically registering the GPS coordinates, the app also records such details as species and type of tree, the date of planting, and information about the farmer who planted it while also assigning a unique number to the tree. TreeCorder can work in an offline mode and can upload data to the cloud when the planters get back to a mobile network or Wi-Fi.
Fransen said EcoMatcher has a partnership with software giant Microsoft that allows customers to track their trees in 3D through the Microsoft Teams platform. In the near future, more tasks can be done with the help of Microsoft’s AI chatbot Copilot, such as doing a PowerPoint presentation of planted trees.
“We will make tree planting as accessible, transparent and fun as possible. That’s the whole idea,” the CEO added.
Focus on corporates
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Hong Kong, EcoMatcher plants trees and forests with vetted foundations specializing in reforestation and conservation projects. Through its digital platform, customers can track, manage, and engage with their trees and forests, making tree planting transparent, fun, and impactful, according to the company’s website.
The platform has more than 50,000 customers globally including companies and individuals, the CEO said, adding that between 500 and 1,000 of them are corporates.
However, the focus is on corporate customers due to their significantly bigger reach than individual consumers. While individuals may buy 5-10 trees, EcoMatcher could sell or plant for a large corporation up to 100,000 or 250,000 trees, Fransen explained.
Among its corporate customers are ride-sharing platform Grab and consumer products giant Procter and Gamble.
The business model
According to Fransen, EcoMatcher’s business model involves paying tree-planting organisations and selling the trees to companies that use them to claim carbon credits, gift their customers, or encourage employee engagement.
The trees “sold” to customers still belong to the landowners and remain at the place they are planted. EcoMatcher’s customers have the right to claim carbon credits from the trees they financed and to virtually gift those trees.
“If you plant trees through EcoMatcher, you can help to combat the climate crisis and improve your business. And improving business comes with increasing customer loyalty and employee engagement. So we help companies to become a better company,” said the CEO, describing firm as a for-profit social enterprise.
“Our typical customers are using the EcoMatcher platform for corporate gifting. Instead of giving somebody a plastic pen, they use our platform for planting a tree on behalf of somebody,” he said.
“What you basically give is a URL of the tree. You give it to your customer, and then once the customer clicks that link, they can virtually travel to the tree, look at the tree in 3D, learn who is the farmer, when was the tree planted, what type of animals are coming back because of tree planting, etc.”
Other customers use the platform for loyalty programs, he said. “You can redeem your points for trees and name them after your child. We work with brands on reward programs where market research companies offer trees as a reward to respondents finishing surveys.”
Challenge & opportunity
For Fransen, the biggest challenge for his business is to convince customers that sustainability is a business opportunity.
“Not a lot of companies understand that. It takes quite some convincing to move companies from doing business in the old way to doing business in the new way,” he said.
However, the challenge also brings an opportunity. “If we have that ability to move people from the old world to the new world, we have an opportunity to grow and make the world a better place,” said the CEO.
Strategic partnership
EcoMatcher is now in a “strategic partnership” with India-based environmental consultant VNV Advisory Services, which has issued more than 20 million verified emission reductions across more than 100 projects. VNV, founded in 2006, has extensive expertise in carbon certification and project management.
Their collaboration, announced on August 6, aims to offer customers unique tree-planting projects branded as TREES+, where each tree can be tracked and managed through the EcoMatcher platform. “Every project will carry official carbon [credits] certification from Verra or Gold Standard, ensuring the highest standards of environmental impact and credibility,” the companies said in a press release.
VNV co-founder and CEO Sandeep Roy Choudhury said VNV stands for Value Network Ventures. “The idea is to create value within what we call the green transition. For Global South countries like Indonesia, Thailand or India, what is our value proposition for a green transition? It cannot be just for the environment, it has to make economic sense as well, because we have to grow. So that is where carbon market comes in,” he said of his company’s business.
“Every company has emissions whether we like it or not. They have to pay for the green transition of someone else. We cannot just expect people to make their green transition on their own. That was the whole idea of what we started with. We are a social enterprise ourselves. We started with how people on the ground can access carbon benefits monetarily,” Choudhury explained.
Under TREES+ projects, every tree planted is documented using EcoMatcher’s proprietary technology, creating a digital footprint accessible on its platform and allowing corporate customers to integrate these trees into their business strategies, the EcoMatcher website says.
