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Grow Trees Pitch Book Corporates3
1. Pradip Shah
IndAsia Fund Advisors Private Limited
3 Scheherazade Justice Vyas Road
Colaba, Mumbai 400 005
Tel: +91-22-2288 1301 Email: pradip.shah@IndAsiaFund.com
Official Campaign Partner of United Nations Environment Program
2. Executive Summary
• www.Grow-Trees.com offers individuals and companies worldwide the facility of
growing a tree on community and public lands for about the price of a
conventional greeting card.
• Grow Trees is an official campaign partner of the United Nations Environment
Program’s Billion Tree Campaign.
• Grow-Trees.com has formal arrangements with credible and experienced
organizations for planting trees, and commissions periodic audits of their planting
activity.
• Corporates can partner with Grow-Trees.com to complement their
– Customer Acquisition Strategies
– Demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility
– Offset carbon emissions from business activities
• Win-Win opportunity Social good can be done while achieving private
gratification.
3. About Grow-Trees
• Our vision is to be the leader of a web-enabled, cost effective service to
individuals and companies globally to enable the planting of trees, and
thereby have a significant impact on the environment in offsetting carbon
emissions, improving wildlife habitats, and upgrading water catchment
areas, while providing flowers, fruit, fodder and fuel to communities and
all living creatures.
• The business is being established by Mr. Pradip Shah, a Chartered and
Cost Accountant by training with an MBA from Harvard Business School.
He helped found India’s first housing finance company (HDFC), India’s first
credit rating agency (CRISIL), and the first foreign India-dedicated private
equity fund (Indocean Fund). He has been honored in Israel with a garden
of hundred trees in his name for providing know-how and technical
assistance to their rating agency.
4. Business Model
• Customers (Individuals or Corporates) pay Rs. 50 (about $1) per tree to Grow-Trees
• Grow-Trees coordinates with its planting partners to plant a tree for every order received
from the customers
• Customers can choose a cause for their planting activity
– Greet someone
– Offset their carbon footprint
• Customers can choose a purpose that they want to serve from their donations
– Trees for wildlife
– Trees for communities
– Trees for forests
• Customizable electronic greeting cards are sent out to a recipient of the customer’s choice
for no additional fee.
Individuals
Corporates
NGOs, Planting Partners,
Rural Communities
5. Why Trees
• Offset the continuous increase in carbon emissions
• Clean energy solutions like solar lanterns or windmills first increase
carbon emissions and then contribute to a solution; each tree absorbs
about 20 Kg of carbon dioxide per year and contributes to the solution
immediately
• Tree planting creates low-skilled jobs
• With a life of over 40 years, a tree provides benefits to current and future
generations of living creatures and beautify surroundings
• In a bid to increase the forest cover, a Parliamentary Panel in India has
recently suggested that government makes it mandatory for corporates to
spend 50% of their CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds towards
afforestation initiatives under the guidance of Environment Ministry*
*Source: Hindu Business Line, May 05, 2010.
6. Why Grow-Trees
• Reliability
– Careful selection of planting partners through a stringent screening process
– Regular audits of all planting partners and projects
– Planting partners make best efforts to ensure the survival of the tree
• Efficiency
– Various location options across India to plant trees
– Single point of contact
– User friendly and easily accessible website interface to place an order
– Electronic gift certificates
• Credible International Recognition
– Grow-Trees is an official campaign partner of the United Nations Environment
Program’s Billion Tree Campaign
7. How we can benefit your business
• Customer Acquisition
– Plant a tree in the name of every new customer
– Can be used as a welcome benefit for attracting new customers
• Offset Carbon Emissions
– Plant trees to offset carbon emissions from business activities
– Helps build an environmentally responsible corporate image
• Corporate Social Responsibility
– Convey in corporate communications to your constituents your company’s
sense of social responsibility and positively influence existing & potential
customers
• Employee Engagement
– Project a positive corporate image to the employees through voluntary payroll
contribution schemes
• Cost Control
– Encourage existing customers to switch to electronic account statements from
physical statements in exchange of a tree being planted for every accepting
customer
8. Illustrative Corporate Collaboration Options
• Welcome
– Welcome new customers on purchase of company product
– Welcome new employees
• Honor
– Honor employees on retirement, promotion or target achievement
– Honor stockholders, franchisee, supply chain partners on long association
• Celebrate
– Celebration of festivals like Diwali, Holi, Dussehara, Annual Cultural Festival by
planting trees
• Corporate Grove
– Encourage employees to plant trees in the grove with matching contributions
from the company
– Stockholders, franchisee and supply chain partners can also contribute to the
grove
• Partner
– Join us as web partner by exchanging logo on mutual website to support the
cause
9. Example – Customer Acquisition
Dear Mr. XYZ,
We welcome you to our family of a million plus
happy customers.
We value our relationship and as a token of
gratitude, we have planted a tree in your name at
Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh!
The plantation certificate is sent to your
registered e-mail address.
In Association with
Presents
An opportunity to make a difference to our
environment!
Buy a postpaid connections and we will honor you
with a thicket of 5 trees planted at Kanha
National Park, Madhya Pradesh!
It’s your chance to help India go Green!
In Association with
Customer Communication Press Advertisements
10. Example - Cost Control
Dear Mr. XYZ,
We are constantly trying to make a positive
impact on the environment. As per our green
initiative, we offer you to stop receiving the
physical bill statements and switch to e-
statements.
This saves paper, and we reward you with a tree
planted in your name at Kanha National Park,
Madhya Pradesh!
In Association with
Printed on monthly bills
•The average per month cost of
printing and sending a physical bill to
a customer is about Rs. 15
•By incentivizing the customers to
switch from physical statements to
e-statements will save this cost in
exchange of Rs. 50 to be paid to
Grow-Trees for planting a tree
•This Rs. 50 can be easily recovered
from the savings in the physical
statement costs in less than 4
months per customer!
12. Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
• Social responsibility remains important to consumers despite the
recession
– More than 75% of consumers say that responsibility is important for each
tested industry
• Key differentiator for products and brands
– 55% of the customers are more likely to choose a product that supports a
certain cause when choosing between otherwise similar products
• Consumers willing to pay more for products with added social benefits
– 38% of respondents plan to spend the same or more on products or services
from socially responsible companies
• Communications about social responsibility have significant impact on
favorability and purchase intent
– 75% of those who have read about a company’s social responsibility agenda
on its website say it made them more likely to purchase products or services
from the company in the future
Source: CSR Branding Survey 2010, Penn Schoen Berland LLC, London
13. CSR in India
• Karmayog NGO performed a detailed study for the 500 largest companies
(by Sales) in India for the year 2009
• Companies are rated from Level 0 to 5 (Level 5 being the highest)
• The parameters that make a company eligible for a particular level are
– Level 0: Companies that make liquor, tobacco, genetically modified crops
– Level 1: CSR activities that cover any kind of social, developmental or
community work
– Level 2: CSR activities that aim to improve processes and products of the
company
– Level 3: CSR activities that are focused on those who are affected directly by
the company
– Level 4: CSR activities that form a part of the daily business activities of the
company
– Level 5: CSR activities that enable sustainable and replicable solutions to
problems faced by society
For more information: http://www.karmayog.org/csr2009/csr2009_29264.htm
14. CSR in India (Contd.)
• The Karmayog 2009 CSR rankings show disturbing facts about the state of CSR in
corporate India
Karmayog CSR Rating 2009 Companies %
Level 5 (highest) 0 0%
Level 4 13 3%
Level 3 66 13%
Level 2 146 29%
Level 1 147 29%
Level 0 (lowest) 128 26%
Total 500 100%
• As the rankings show, none of the largest 500 companies in India is ranked at the
highest level and over 50% of the companies do not do any significant CSR
activities!
• Huge opportunity to create a goodwill about a corporate brand in the minds of
consumers and society at large.
For more information: http://www.karmayog.org/csr2009/csr2009_29264.htm
15. Globally Accepted Business and CSR Model
• The Jewish National Fund has, since 1901, planted 240 million trees; currently it
charges USD 18 per tree
• American Forests plants 4 million trees a year with a minimum outlay of USD 15
per customer
• Many global Corporates have adopted the model to establish the environment
friendly attribute of their brand identity
– Toyota Companies plan to plant 1.2 million trees in Europe. Toyota Monaco
plants 21 trees per hybrid vehicle sold. Toyota Spain, Toyota Deutschland and
Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd. all actively support tree planting projects.
– IKEA funds tree projects of more than $33,000 per store to offset the
emissions created by IKEA customers and employees traveling to and from the
store.
– Fila USA has a tree planting collaboration with American Forests, to
complement its use of sustainable organic and recycled materials in their
women's performance fabrications
– Bayer Group, working with UNEP, has planted 300,000 trees around the world
*Source: Internet Articles and Corporate Websites
16. Our offerings
• Projects
– Kherwara/ Girwa/ Kotra, Udaipur District, Rajasthan: 34,000 trees over 91
hectares
– Satkosia Gorge Wildlife Sanctuary , Orissa: 50,000 trees in the periphery of the
sanctuary
– Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh: 50,000 trees in the periphery of the
Park
– Kumbhalgarh Sactuary, Rajasthan: 50,000 trees in the periphery of the
sanctuary
– Kotra, Panchmahal district, Gujarat: 13,500 trees
• Options
– A single tree
– A thicket of 5 trees
– A garden of 100 trees
– A forest of 1000 trees
– Any customized number to suit the corporate needs!
17. Our Corporate Supporters
• IndAsia Fund Advisors: The company provides advisory services for private
equity transactions, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and joint
ventures, business development, and corporate finance matters to domestic
and multi-national corporations. Amongst the social causes it supports are
children's welfare by sponsoring the mid-day meal program at a municipal
school in Bombay; children's education; aid for cancer patients; healthcare
support for indigent patients. It is actively involved in WildHavens whose
mission is to preserve, protect and enlarge habitats for wildlife.
• Shah Foods Limited: A company listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, is a
contract manufacturer of biscuits employing 150 people. It is an ISO: 22,000
certified company, has won awards for the quality of its products, has adopted
energy-saving technologies and equipment at it its plant in North Gujarat,
switched to greener fuel for its oven, and practices the philosophy of reduce,
recycle and reuse in its operations.
• Blackstone India: The India office of Blackstone Group, a leading global Private
Equity company, has supported Grow-Trees.com initiative by supporting the
planting of 50 trees and gifting the certificates to their senior management.
19. Disclaimer
This document has been prepared by IndAsia Fund Advisors Private Limited (“IndAsia”) on the basis of
information provided by publicly available information and other sources deemed reliable. IndAsia has not
independently verified all of the information contained herein. Neither IndAsia nor, any of its respective
associates/affiliates or their respective directors, officers or employees makes any warranty or
representation (expressed or implied) concerning the accuracy or completeness of this document and
none of them shall have any liability with respect to, either the material contained in this paper or any
other written or oral statement provided herein. Nothing contained in this paper is, or should be relied
upon as a promise or representation as to any matter. Any forecasts or projections contained herein are
based on information available at the time this document was prepared and there is no representation,
warranty or other assurance that any of the forecasts or projections will be realized. This document does
not constitute, either express or implied, an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer for the purchase or
invitation for sale. This document should not be considered as a recommendation by IndAsia or any of its
associates/affiliates or their respective directors, officers, agents or employees for any investment or
disinvestment decision and the recipient is expected to rely on its own judgment and analysis in using this
document. The document, together with any further information which may be provided to the recipient
is made available on the condition that it is for the sole use of the recipient. The recipient of this
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without the express written consent of IndAsia