As sustainability shifts from voluntary ambition to regulatory and market necessity, companies are facing a new reality: reporting alone is no longer enough. ESG is rapidly evolving from a disclosure exercise into a strategic function tied directly to competitiveness, financing access, and supply chain participation. The next phase of climate action will not be defined by intent, but by execution.
In a recent conversation with Indian Startup Times, Shaayak Chatterjee, Founder of Breathe ESG, shared the story behind building a platform designed to shift sustainability from reporting to real operational impact.
Shaayak’s journey into climate-tech was not a conventional one. His academic experiences at University of California, Berkeley and Ashoka University exposed him to sustainability from both environmental and economic perspectives. However, it was his work advising Indian Railways that fundamentally shaped his approach. Operating at one of the largest infrastructure scales in the world offered him a rare vantage point into the complexity of implementing sustainability at scale. He saw firsthand that while organizations were increasingly committed to climate goals, they lacked the tools to measure and operationalize modify effectively. Data gaps, fragmented systems, and manual processes meant that ESG often remained a reporting exercise rather than a transformation tool.
This realization became the foundation for Breathe ESG, which was established in 2022 with the goal of solving sustainability measurement challenges through technology and data innotifyigence.
At its core, Breathe ESG is built on a simple but powerful belief ESG should enable action, not just compliance. The platform leverages artificial innotifyigence to ingest both structured and unstructured data, including invoices, supplier records, and operational documents, transforming them into granular emissions insights. Instead of limiting itself to high-level disclosures, the system delivers location-level innotifyigence and rapidly measures Scope 3 emissions, which remain the most complex and opaque part of corporate carbon footprints.
What differentiates Breathe ESG is its utilize of AI agents that assist in drafting compliance reports, detecting anomalies in sustainability data, identifying reporting gaps, and guiding suppliers through emissions data collection. In doing so, the platform does not seek to replace traditional ESG advisors but rather to serve as a technological backbone that enhances their ability to operate across increasingly complex value chains.
Shaayak’s perspective on sustainability has also been shaped by his early involvement in initiatives that framed climate action as a financial systems challenge. He believes meaningful progress depconcludes on aligning capital with climate goals through mechanisms such as green financing and sustainability-linked investments. This financial lens continues to influence Breathe ESG’s positioning as a bridge between operational emissions data and strategic decision-creating.
Even the company’s name reflects its purpose. Inspired by the lived experience of growing up near Delhi NCR during periods of severe smog, “Breathe ESG” symbolizes the aspiration to translate sustainability efforts into tangible improvements in quality of life.
The company’s growth journey has been supported by early backing from 100X.VC and a network of angel investors. Participation in accelerators such as Gruhas and BITS Conquest supported the founding team navigate the venture ecosystem and build strong networks. This momentum eventually culminated in a ₹12 crore seed round led by early investor Srinivasan Namala, resulting in a post-money valuation of ₹83 crore. The funding is now supporting the company’s international expansion, including enattempt into the United States.
In an increasingly regulated global environment shaped by frameworks such as CSRD and CBAM, Breathe ESG has been designed to adapt continuously rather than reactively. The platform aims to enable organizations to treat evolving ESG regulations not as burdens, but as strategic opportunities supported by reliable and real-time data.
Looking ahead, the company is focutilizing on advancing product carbon footprinting capabilities to enable interoperable emissions visibility at the product level, while also building automation systems that create continuous ESG reporting possible. This shift from periodic disclosures to always-on innotifyigence represents what Shaayak sees as the future of sustainability management.
Ultimately, he envisions Breathe ESG as more than a reporting tool. The long-term goal is to build a climate innotifyigence infrastructure that empowers corporations, financial institutions, and supply chains to create better, quicker decisions in their transition toward sustainability.
As ESG expectations continue to evolve, Breathe ESG is positioning itself not simply as a compliance platform, but as an enabling system for measurable climate progress.
Interview Conducted By: Arushi Agarwal
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