Everyone sells the certificate.
V2 just made the foundation necessary.
A science-based target has two parts. The certificate is the badge on the dashboard. It is a fixed, published fee that you pay one time. The foundation is the 15-category Scope 3 inventory. You build it across every entity, you consolidate it, you diagnose the base year, and you make it ready for assurance. Everyone in India sells the certificate. Climes sells the foundation.
Sell the foundation, not the certificate. On the certificate you lose on price.
The whole thesis in three numbers
This is the full published SBTi validation fee for a company with less than €250m turnover, with the lower-middle-income discount. An SME pays $625. A company with less than $10m revenue pays nothing. CONFIRMED
Under V2, you must cover every Scope 3 category that is 5% or more of the total. You must also assure the base year. No software does this work. CONFIRMED
The SBTi published V2 on 11 June 2026. You can use it from 1 February 2027. Every new target must use it from 2028. Existing targets migrate at their five-year review, not on a forced date. CONFIRMED
Three pools, one clock
The BFSI play found three books that nobody counts. The SBTi play finds three pools of companies that nobody works. All three are on the same clock.
Pool 1 · Committed, not validated
DERIVED Indian companies that committed and started a 24-month clock. They have no validated target. They are stuck on the foundation. If they miss the clock, the dashboard shows a public "Commitment Removed" state.
Lead: your cliff is [date]. The SBTi removed 239 companies in March 2024.
Pool 2 · Validated, V2-exposed
CONFIRMED Validated Indian companies. The market treats them as closed. Many built V1 targets on spend-based data and an unassured base year. Neither one survives V2.
Lead: at your five-year review, V2 needs an assured base year and Scope 3 at 5%. This is a nurture, not a forced 2028 refresh.
Pool 3 · Exposed claimers
BRSR filers with a public net-zero claim and no SBTi target. Or a partial-scope claim that does not conform. CBAM and CCTS hit these high-emitters hardest.
Lead: your public claim has no standing. It is a greenwashing exposure.
Why one vendor can serve all three
SBTi, CBAM, CCTS, BRSR value-chain and the TfS product-footprint channel all read from the same activity data. Only the output changes. One inventory answers all of them. This is the SBTi form of the BFSI "one architecture, eight methods" argument. It is why an SBTi engagement is the anchor for everything else Climes sells.
The certificate got cheaper and more common. The foundation became necessary. Sell the necessary part.
Opportunity Map · India
The Indian SBTi universe, split into the three pools and ranked inside each. This is the SBTi form of the BFSI target trio.
The universe, in counts
India ranks 8th in the world. CONFIRMED SBTi, Mar 2026
Pool 2. CONFIRMED SBTi CEO interview, Mar 2026
Pool 1, the prize. DERIVED
The exact names in Pool 1 come from the SBTi dashboard "by company" export, filtered to Location = India and Status = Committed. This pull is the highest-value action for this map. It is still open. Sort the export by commitment date. The top rows are the warmest and most time-pressured calls in the market.
The ranking lens
Every company scores 1 to 3 on four axes. The scores sum to a 4 to 12 priority score. The third axis is the one that nobody else scores.
| Axis | Scores 3 when |
|---|---|
| Clock pressure | Pool 1 is near its 24-month cliff. Pool 2 scores 2 (2028). Pool 3 scores 1, and more if CBAM or CCTS bites. |
| Foundation gap | The company committed and has no Scope 3 inventory. Validated on spend-based data scores 2. A mature activity-based inventory scores 1. |
| Base-year landmine | A recent or pending acquisition, a boundary change, or an undiagnosed base year. This is the Climes-only axis. |
| Warmth and access | An existing Climes relationship or a warm route. A cold high-emitter scores 1. |
Top of the tracker
From gtm/master-sbti-tracker.csv. The highest priority scores come first.
| Company | Pool | Score | Why it ranks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anupam Rasayan | 3 | 11 | Worked account. A 2027 net-zero claim that does not conform. The Jayhawk base-year landmine is live. The diagnostic ask is on the table. |
| Tech Mahindra | 2 | 8 | An existing Climes account. An early V1 validation that is likely spend-based. Lead the V2 re-baseline. |
| Mahindra & Mahindra | 2 | 8 | X-Ray 75/100 and a live PCF demo. Warm through Ankit Todi. Use the V2 assurance angle. |
| Galaxy Surfactants | 2 | 7 | Specialty chemicals. Base-year and Category 1 exposure, like Anupam. |
| Adani Energy Solutions | 2 | 7 | Group boundary changes make a base-year landmine. |
| Wipro / Infosys | 2 | 7 | The oldest V1 vintage. The biggest V2 gap. |
Rank Pool 1 first. The deadline sells for us, and the first close becomes the reference that makes every Pool 2 and Pool 3 call credible.
Revenue Pools
Where the SBTi value is, sized from the bottom up. Every number here is a model with a confidence tag. INTERNAL means our own proposal, not a market fact. Read the skeptic note at the end. MODEL
The value hiding in plain sight
Everyone sells to the ~445 companies on the public SBTi dashboard. That pool is warm and small. Its one-time value is about ₹30 to 45 crore. The pool that nobody works is 15,000 to 25,000 export SMEs whose buyers already force carbon data on them. Its one-time value is about ₹410 to 690 crore. That is about 15 times larger. It is invisible because the buyer raised the hand, not the company.
One-time target-setting value
Bars are to scale. The recurring subscription layer sits on top of both and is not shown here. Values are model outputs, see the pricing note in Product and Pricing.
Firms pulled by foreign buyers and CBAM. Up to 40k–55k broader. TRIANGULATED
Committed or validated on the public SBTi list. CONFIRMED
Beachhead one-time value against the enterprise pool. ESTIMATE
Beachhead calculator
Size the export-SME motion
One-time price fixed at ₹2.75 lakh per SME (INTERNAL PROPOSAL). The subscription tail is additional and is not priced yet. This is a model to reason with, not a forecast.
The five pools
A · Export-SME beachhead PRIMARY
15k–25k firms. Buyer-pull. One-time ₹410–690 cr plus a recurring layer. Textiles, leather, chemicals, auto components. Start at Vayda.
B · Committed, not validated
171–196 enterprises on the 24-month clock. About ₹15 cr one-time, but the warmest list and the source of reference logos.
C · Validated base, Scope 3 and V2
249 firms. Scope 3 expansion and V2 migration at the five-year review. A nurture, not a deadline. See the V2 correction below.
D · Net-zero claimers, no SBTi
~150–250 firms with public claims and no validated target. Long cycle. ESTIMATE, inferred
E · The recurring annuity THE MULTIPLIER
Every customer from A to D becomes a subscription. SBTi needs annual disclosure, a recalculation on every acquisition, a Scope 3 expansion, and a V2 migration. A consultant sells one PDF and leaves. Carbon-OS keeps the customer. The after-sale is bigger and stickier than the sale, and nobody has productized it.
Why this can be smaller (read before you quote a number)
Buyer-pull on small suppliers is commercial, not legal. The EU capped ESG demands on suppliers with fewer than 1,000 staff. Many SMEs need a basic inventory or a product footprint, not a full target, so a cheaper entry product can fit better than the ₹2.75L target. Price realization is not proven. Capture rates are assumptions. V2 does not force a 2028 refresh. The market-size reports are top-down and unreliable, and the "$320B India ESG market" figure is a unit error that we do not use.
Even the conservative floor, four beachhead sectors at a 2% capture with half the firms buying only a cheap inventory, is several times the whole enterprise dashboard. Everything above it is upside.
Product and Pricing
The Carbon-OS SBTi workflow, and what it costs against the market. Prices tagged INTERNAL are our proposals, not market facts. INTERNAL
The five-stage workflow
- 1. Setup and boundary. Company, sector, geography, base year, and which facilities and entities are in the boundary. This is where the dark-units and base-year landmine lives.
- 2. Baseline. Build the Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventory. Map activity to emission factors. This is the step that removes most of the consultant back-and-forth.
- 3. Target. Set the target on the 1.5°C absolute contraction path, with a net-zero-or-reduction choice.
- 4. Report. Export the submission pack.
- 5. Validate. The customer pays the SBTi fee and uploads. We do not touch the certificate.
Against a manual project. INTERNAL
Including expert review. INTERNAL
~35% orchestrated, ~29% AI-prefilled. INTERNAL
Price against the market
| Line | Climes (INTERNAL) | Consultant / market |
|---|---|---|
| SME target-setting, one-time | ~₹2.75L | ~₹5–6L (the Vayda job was ₹6L for 5 units) |
| Large client, one-time | ~₹8L | ₹10–20L multi-facility |
| SBTi certificate fee | A pass-through the customer pays. Free for developing-country SMEs under $10m revenue, low-thousands otherwise. CONFIRMED | |
| Annual subscription (tracking, recalculation) | Not yet priced. This is the recurring annuity and it needs a number. | |
| Scope 3 expansion | A separate upsell on the validated and beachhead base. | |
The live ledger, the recurring hook
CarbonOS is a system of record for the enterprise. For its buyers it is a live ledger, a real-time certificate the customer shares, the way the Verra registry works. This is the product that justifies the subscription and locks out the consultant who handed over a PDF and left.
The honest pricing question
Many beachhead SMEs need a basic inventory or a product carbon footprint, not a full validated target. So the beachhead is inventory-first, with SBTi as the upsell for the ambitious minority. Consider a cheaper entry product than the ₹2.75L target, and do not assume every export SME buys the full job. Our price anchors are internal, not market benchmarks, so harden them with three to five real consultant quotes.
Battle Cards
The three or four competitors that Climes will meet in an Indian SBTi deal, and how to answer each one. Do not use a competitor's credential problems against them. An attack on the advisor is an attack on the prospect.
Big-4 · EY / PwC / Deloitte / KPMG
How they show up: a CXO-led net-zero program with SBTi inside it. They also sign the assurance.
Weakness: slow, priced at partner rates, and staffed by juniors on the plant-level Scope 3 data chase. A conflict exists when they advise and then assure.
Answer: "You pay partner rates for analysts who chase plant data. We are the foundation layer. We give you audit-ready Scope 3 at V2's 5% level, at a fraction of the cost, and we hand your assurer a clean, ISAE-3000-ready inventory." Sit under them, not against them.
Sustainext · consulting and platform
How they show up: the closest mirror. SBTi consulting plus an AI platform, full Scope 3, base year, and submission support.
Weakness: a platform-first pitch can put too little into the hands-on, multi-entity data collection.
Answer: win on primary-data rigour and consolidation. Ask the prospect: "who walks your plants and reconciles subsidiary ledgers, the tool or people?"
Carbon software · Watershed / Persefoni / Normative / Updapt
How they show up: "our platform gets you SBTi-aligned targets."
Weakness: the data problem. They need clean, consolidated data that they do not collect.
Answer: "The software is the easy 20%. It assumes that someone already built your 15-category inventory across entities. That is the 80% we do. Buy the tool. Buy us to fill it right and keep it audit-defensible." Co-sell when you can.
Niche cert advisers · Growlity / DQS / PQSMitra
How they show up: "we will get you SBTi-validated."
Weakness: they focus on the certificate. The certificate is a fixed pass-through fee and thin value.
Answer: "The validation fee is published and fixed. A markup to move paperwork buys little. The spend that decides whether you pass, and whether it survives assurance, is the inventory. That is where we work."
One-line position
Everyone sells the certificate. V2 just made the foundation, the 15-category, 5%-level, ISAE-3000-assured Scope 3 inventory, necessary. Climes builds the foundation. The certificate is a $2,000 pass-through on top.
On the idea that third-party validators will make the certificate a commodity: the SBTi entity split points that way, but an open market of validators is not real yet. DO NOT OVERCLAIM Lead with V2's necessary data assurance and 5% Scope 3 level, which is confirmed.
SBTi 101
What a science-based target is, in plain words, so that anyone on the team can hold the room.
What SBTi is
The Science Based Targets initiative checks a company's emissions-reduction target against climate science. The science is what a 1.5°C limit needs. A company measures its emissions and sets a reduction target on a set path. Then it submits the target to the SBTi. The SBTi checks it against published rules. If it passes, the SBTi lists it in public. SBTi is voluntary. It is now the standard that buyers, investors and regulators point to.
The three scopes
- Scope 1: emissions from what the company burns direct. Its boilers, furnaces and fleet.
- Scope 2: emissions from the electricity that it buys.
- Scope 3: everything else in the value chain, across 15 categories. Purchased goods, transport, the use of sold products, and more. For most companies this is most of the footprint. It is the hard part.
The journey, and where it breaks
- 1. Commit. Sign a commitment letter. This starts a 24-month clock.
- 2. Measure. Build a full inventory across all three scopes and all 15 Scope 3 categories, on a chosen base year. Companies get stuck here.
- 3. Set the target. Scope 1+2 on a 1.5°C path. Scope 3 at well-below-2°C. A near-term horizon of 5 to 10 years.
- 4. Submit and validate. Pay the fee. The SBTi checks the target and lists it.
- 5. Disclose and reduce. Report progress each year.
What changed in 2026: the V2 standard
The SBTi published the Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 on 11 June 2026. You can use it from 1 February 2027. Every company must use it from 1 January 2028. Three changes matter.
- Scope 3 becomes necessary for every large company (Category A). The old "only if Scope 3 is more than 40%" gate is gone. Near-term targets must cover every category that is 5% or more of total Scope 3.
- A third party must assure the base-year inventory. The level is limited assurance (ISAE 3000) for Category A.
- A new Category A and Category B split scales the rules to company size.
The standard moved the hard part from the target to the data. The data is the foundation. The foundation is us.
Glossary
The terms that come up in an SBTi room. Learn them cold.
- SBTi
- Science Based Targets initiative. It checks corporate targets against climate science. It now splits into SBTi (the standard-setter) and SBTi Services Limited (the validator).
- CNZS V2
- Corporate Net-Zero Standard, version 2.0. Published 11 Jun 2026. Necessary from 1 Jan 2028.
- Near-term target
- A 5 to 10 year emissions-reduction target. Most companies validate this one first.
- Long-term or net-zero target
- A target to reach net-zero across all three scopes by no later than 2050. It needs deep absolute cuts before you neutralize the residual.
- Scope 1 / 2 / 3
- Direct emissions. Purchased-energy emissions. Value-chain emissions (15 categories). Scope 3 is most of the footprint and the hard part.
- The 15 categories
- The GHG Protocol split of Scope 3. Purchased goods, capital goods, fuel and energy, upstream and downstream transport, waste, business travel, commuting, leased assets, processing of sold products, use of sold products, end-of-life, franchises and investments. A full inventory covers all of them.
- Base year
- The reference year that you measure reductions against. It must be no earlier than 2015. The choice is the sharpest decision in the process.
- The 5% recalculation rule
- A change of 5% or more in total base-year emissions forces a recalculation of the base year. This is the landmine.
- Absolute Contraction Approach (ACA)
- The default target method. Cut absolute emissions by a fixed amount each year. The floor is 4.2% per year for Scope 1+2 (updated Apr 2026).
- SDA
- Sectoral Decarbonization Approach. Sector-specific 1.5°C paths (power, cement, steel and more) that bring companies to a sector intensity benchmark.
- The 40% rule
- Under V1, a Scope 3 target is necessary if Scope 3 is 40% or more of total emissions. V2 makes Scope 3 necessary for every Category A company.
- The 67% rule
- Near-term Scope 3 targets must cover at least 67% of total Scope 3 emissions.
- Category A / B
- The V2 company-size split. Category A (larger, about €450m turnover or more, or 1,000 staff or more) carries the full rules, with necessary Scope 3 and base-year assurance.
- Limited assurance (ISAE 3000)
- A third-party check of the emissions data. Necessary on the base year for Category A under V2.
- Commitment Removed
- The public dashboard state that a company moves to if it misses its 24-month validation window. The SBTi removed 239 companies on 7 Mar 2024.
- Spend-based and activity-based data
- An estimate from money spent (weak) against an estimate from physical activity data (strong). V2's assurance pressure moves companies off spend-based data.
- FLAG
- Forest, Land and Agriculture. A separate SBTi guidance track for land-intensive sectors.
- CBAM
- EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. The paying phase started on 1 Jan 2026. The first declaration is due 30 Sep 2027. It hits steel, aluminium, cement, fertiliser, hydrogen and electricity.
- CCTS
- India's Carbon Credit Trading Scheme. GHG-intensity targets on FY26 and FY27. Trading starts about Oct 2026.
- BRSR
- Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting. SEBI's disclosure regime. Core assurance widens to the top 1,000 by FY26-27.
- TfS
- Together for Sustainability. The chemical-industry buyer network. Its product-footprint program (assessed by EcoVadis) drives supplier product-footprint data.
Target Engine
Put in a footprint and see what a near-term science-based target needs. The result is illustrative and set to the current rules. MODELLED
Inputs
Method note: Scope 1+2 uses the Absolute Contraction Approach at the 4.2% per year floor across the target period. This is an illustrative linear reduction on the base-year value. Scope 3 near-term ambition is a well-below-2°C alignment, not a fixed percentage, in the live rules. We do not show a Scope 3 percentage rate.
The Base-Year Landmine
The sharpest thing Climes brings, and the thing that no certificate-seller looks for. A change of 5% or more in base-year emissions forces a recalculation. An acquisition set before the base year sets it off.
Acquisition and structural-change simulator
The worked case: Anupam Rasayan and Jayhawk
Anupam's FY26 acquisition of Jayhawk Fine Chemicals (US) drove a 65% revenue jump. A US fine-chemicals business added to a 352,771 t footprint goes past the 5% threshold on its own. So a base year set at FY2025 or earlier becomes invalid almost at once. Months of work and a public target undone by a rule that the company did not know applied. The advice: set the target on a complete consolidated year that already includes Jayhawk (FY2026 or FY2027). Diagnose this before you file the commitment letter. Anupam call, 27 Jul 2026
Fee and ROI Model
The certificate is open and cheap. Say so out loud. It turns any competitor's price into a markup on a pass-through. Fees CONFIRMED · Target Validation Service Offerings v6.1, Oct 2025
Certificate fee lookup
The result shows the near-term validation fee. You must claim the India discount at registration or you lose it. The SME route needs less than 10,000 tCO2e Scope 1+2 and 3 or more of: less than 250 staff, less than €50m turnover, less than €25m assets, not in mandatory FLAG.
The ROI frame
The certificate is the small, fixed number above. The foundation is the engagement. It is the multi-entity inventory, the base-year diagnosis, and the work to make it ready for assurance. Internal time plus advisory plus software often cost more than the SBTi fee. So the honest pitch is this: "the badge costs you $2,000. Whether you earn it, and whether it survives assurance, depends on the inventory. That is what we build, and we price it from evidence."
The wedge product: a fixed-fee Base Year and Boundary Diagnostic, 3 to 4 weeks. It is small enough to approve without a committee, and it prices the real job from evidence, not from a guess.
The certificate is not the price. The foundation is.
The number above is the SBTi fee, and it is small or zero. Our price is for the foundation under it: about ₹2.75 lakh for an SME (~45% below the market) and about ₹8 lakh for a large client against a ₹10 to 20 lakh consultant range, plus an annual subscription. See Product and Pricing for the full table. Our price figures are internal proposals, not market benchmarks.
The Commitment Cliff
A committed company has 24 months to validate. If it does not, the dashboard moves it to a public "Commitment Removed" state. This deadline sells Pool 1 for us.
Cliff calculator
The SBTi moved 239 companies to "Commitment Removed" because they missed the 31 Jan 2024 deadline. The list includes Microsoft, P&G, Unilever and Walmart. A re-commitment carries no penalty. CONFIRMED
The SBTi never published the full 239 list. DO NOT CLAIM We cannot say that an Indian company was in it until the dashboard confirms it. A confirmed name is a live re-commitment opportunity.
The cliff email writes itself, once the dashboard export gives us the commitment date to fill in.
Standing Rules
From the BFSI play. Each rule exists because a breach costs credibility in a room.
| # | Rule |
|---|---|
| 1 | Never invent a company score or a target number. Ever. |
| 2 | Never say that this learning environment is the live product. It is illustrative, and it says so. |
| 3 | Label every estimate. DERIVED and MODELLED are on the page, not hidden. |
| 4 | Do not quote 2.5% per year for Scope 3. Scope 1+2 is a 4.2% per year floor. Scope 3 is well-below-2°C. |
| 5 | Do not say that an Indian company was in the 239 March 2024 removals until the dashboard confirms it. |
| 6 | Do not overclaim the idea that third-party validators make the certificate a commodity. Lead with V2 assurance and the 5% level. |
| 7 | Do not assert the V2 Category A test (AND against OR on turnover and staff) until the V2 PDF confirms it. |
| 8 | Never use a competitor's credential problems against them. An attack on the advisor is an attack on the prospect. |
| 9 | No em dashes in anything we write. |
| 10 | Light mode, not dark, on every asset except the intro and footer. |
| 11 | Keep the certificate and the foundation apart in every sentence. |
| 12 | Diagnose the base year before you price. The Vayda and Anupam lesson. Not negotiable. |
The source for every figure in this environment: reference/sbti-research-2026-08-12.md. Play: gtm/sbti-play-v1-2026-08-12.md. Map: gtm/sbti-opportunity-map-2026-08-12.md. Motion: gtm/sbti-gtm-motion-2026-08-12.md.