Panel · Centre for Sustainable Development, Bangalore

Sustainability as a business decision

Karthik joined a panel of leaders working on climate and business. His view was a plain one: a clean practice spreads only when it makes commercial sense. Treated as a moral extra, it stalls the first time it costs more than the old way.

His advice to founders building in the space was to lead with numbers a finance team can check. Run a small pilot, show what it saves or earns on the profit and loss, then scale what works. Customers and capital tend to follow once the numbers line up.