Back in the early 2000s, very few people in the world were working on carbon markets. Mahua Acharya, a graduate of Yale’s Class of 2002, was one of them. She now works in renewable energy and electric mobility. Throughout her evolving career, she has carved out a significant place for herself in the field of sustainability. In addition to her role as CEO and Managing Director, she also lectures at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, and most recently at the Kautilya School of Public Policy. Listen to this episode of MAP to learn about the business of climate change, carbon markets, and insights from one of the leading figures in sustainability on how to navigate a career in this field.
Find a transcript of the episode below:
Shanta Venugopal (00:02)
Thank you again for taking the time to share some of your knowledge with us today. And for our first question, could you tell us a little bit more about what you do now and how your work week looks?
Mahua Acharya (00:34)
Sure. Thank you. I’m thinking of doing some very potentially very interesting work. And I look forward to seeing what the series looks like when it comes out. What does my work week look like? Not very different from a lot of other working people.
I’m a morning person. I check in on my meals. I do some writing sometimes when I have to do some writing. It’s usually in the mornings. That’s when I can concentrate a little bit. I try to get in a run at least four to five days a week. That keeps me going. It’s my time. It’s when I think about stuff. It also just wakes me up. I’m generally in the office.
I’ve always been in an office environment. I’ve usually been in the office about half past 9, 9:45 maybe, not 45, but sometimes I’m there. And I don’t usually stay late. I don’t have ever stayed late in my career, perhaps in the early years when I was very, very junior. But I generally try to end when the office ends at about 6 to 6:15 max.
Shantha Venugopal (01:07)
It sounds like you have prioritised some amount of a work -life balance throughout your career, even though you’ve juggled many different types of careers actually over the course of the last couple of decades. Could I ask, this new venture that you’re starting now, the development platform regarding energy transitions at scale in India. Could you talk us through some of that and how you started this venture?
Sure. I’ve now put in about 20 years, a little bit more in fact, of time to the cause of climate change. And yes, I have had different roles, but I’ve studied. I have a master’s degree in environmental studies.
I’ve always worked on climate. I have always worked, I’ve started out in carbon markets and then over time roles have been different. You just grow, you start managing people, you manage organisations. So that’s very climate focused. So in that sense, it’s been very, very concentrated. Climate sustainability, less environment, but much more climate. And then in the last few years, it has been electric mobility since coming back to India.
I would like to now continue my, I’m a creative person and I like to be at the edge of possibility or at the pushing at the margins of the possible and the realm of the possible. I, of course, I like to innovate in that space because that’s where I think most impact happens.
An impact at scale allows us to get transformation. So in the new platform, I’d like to A, bring in all of my experience, the varied friendships I have from different countries, different cultural environments, different contexts. I’d like to bring that relationship to bear. I’d like to be able to build on India. India offers a level of scale that is unmatched. And I’d like to build on the enthusiasm of this country.
So I’d like to bring it all together. My objectives are to do things that affect the public, but they have to be commercially viable. So that’s how you achieve impact at scale. So in this new platform, I’d like to continue to work on electric mobility, continue to work on energy transition, which is battery storage. We have to find a way to monetize our carbon credits and what I call environmental attributes, which otherwise go without a price. You’ve got to put a price on it. You can’t say on one hand, the climate is in a bad shape, but then I don’t actually put a price on valuing it to be in a good shape. So you must put a price to it. And it’s quite important, in fact, to podcast like this, because you will be sending this out to people who are wanting to get in. This is the concept. So with this new platform, I will be aggregating demand. That’s how we get scale. And I’ll be making business opportunities bankable and viable.
Shanta Venugopal (02:34)
I think that’s a really powerful platform and I really hope to see it blossom in the coming few months, especially when we send the podcast out because I think this is going to be very impactful for the young people who hopefully will listen to this podcast, who think that they might have to go abroad in order to get the expertise and also put it into practice and to innovate. And it’s nice to see that that’s changing now. I think India is going to be at the forefront of all of these issues, especially because we’re so uniquely and heavily impacted by climate change. So that’s great to hear.
Mahua Acharya (03:19)
I have always had a hand in teaching. I’m not an academic, but I’ve always had a hand in trying to keep the dialogue open. I think academic institutions are largely MBA institutions. For a long time, I would deliver a particular course to masters students, MBA students. And then till sometime, I changed course a little bit and we started delivering that to executive education. The trick, it’s not so much balancing. I don’t see it as much as balancing. I like what I do. So when you like what you do, there’s a particular compartment in your brain that is reserved for those things, things become difficult when two compartments are competing with each other. And I think I’ve got little compartments that do their own thing. So I’ve never really had a balance issue in terms of debt. Sometimes it’s a balance issue just in terms of time commitments.
Shanta Venugopal (04:17)
You’ve talked a little bit about this with me before when we spoke previously. But could you tell us how you got into the field to begin with?
Mahua Acharya (04:26)
I studied it. I did my master’s degree in environmental management.
Shantha Venugopal (04:34)
But what made you choose it?
Mahua Acharya (04:46)
In those days, it’s probably off beat. Today, it is probably still off beat. It’s still a very small little school. It’s in a little valley. Keeping nature and protecting nature was always something that you did, not because it was divine or anything, just something that you did because you relied on it. And so I think I sort of grew up with that sensitivity.
I may have also spent a lot of my young childhood years in Africa as an outdoor kid. Outdoor kids could play a little sport during the holidays if you had access to a field but otherwise you’re just outside in the plants and today as an adult I would love to go hiking somewhere except I live in Delhi and it’s a bit of a trek. So I’ve had
Like a lot of kids that went to the same school, we all had that exposure. I just chose to work on it and to then spend my professional life in it.
Shantha Venugopal (06:49)
And since you’ve taught so many batches of students who potentially will do the same thing as you, what would you say are the key attributes that would make someone successful in this field or maybe even generally seeing as you’ve taught at so many MBA schools? What would make them successful?
Mahua Acharya (07:02)
I think number one is work ethic. Nothing can come and beat that you have to have the work ethic anywhere, number of hours spent, the quality of the art spent, the level of curiosity, the amount of effort you want to put in mental effort to find something that’s one the quest for excellence. Which is not necessarily the quest for perfection, but the quest for excellence without that you’re just anybody anybody else. So what will make somebody do well?
Of course, you’ve got to be interested in what you’re doing. So if people want to get into a business of climate, you have to have a purpose. You don’t just drift into the climate.. There’s a lot of people who drift into it because it’s fashionable. I hope that it’s more than I love that it’s fashionable, because it just means many more people will walk towards it. But then what will make them do well? Not so much.
The level of information they have, that’s a function of the level of curiosity, just telling it, it does talking about. So now after all these years of managing people, being in the workplace, teaching, what sets people aside is just their quest for knowing more, delivering more, delivering better, delivering better quality, delivering faster, just knowing more. compares, nothing can compare with how much more knowledge you have.
Till you reach a point where the function of how you translate that knowledge into a workable application solution is what may set you apart. But that comes with practice. So yeah, it’s all in the pocket of pursuit of excellence and work ethic.
Shantha Venugopal (10:28)
And what has been your favourite work experience so far, would you say?
Mahua Acharya (10:37)
I think my very first job, you like all of us, we’re all, your very first job, I had a lot of fun people in my work, in my office space, they were young, I was early career, in your twenties you feel you’re indestructible, I certainly felt I was completely indestructible, I could sleep at 12, get up at 4, I would be fine. I would sleep at 3, get up at 7, I’d still be fine. And there’s no concept of, yeah. So I had a great time. You’re also at your creative best, because if you have a good boss like I did, they wouldn’t shut you down. So I had a great time. And also remember, I moved from my master’s degree. I went into working on carbon markets. That was my master’s thesis.
So to be able to apply your master’s thesis into real life, very few people are able to do that. So by far, my early career, five years, was great.
Shanhta Venugopal (12:25)
Could you also describe those early five years further? What was the work? Who were the mentors? Who were the colleagues? What was the part of it that was thrilling, other than your own ability and creativity at the time?
Mahua Acharya (13:07)
What was thrilling was going into reality, into a commercial contract. Wow, I think nobody did that. There were a few of us in the world that would design the carbon market in the early years. And I think we were all unhappy people. We were all running on adrenaline for years because we were creating something new. We were all environmentalists now playing around with the market.
Shantha Venugopal (14:03)
And if you’re willing to share a little bit more on your thoughts on carbon markets in India now, seeing as they’re starting to take off and some cities are already adopting it and we have now certain governmental entities that are responsible for it, what do you think its potential will be and what are your thoughts on its development so far?
Mahua Acharya (14:35)
Of course, I must start by saying I’m just so thankful that we even have this conversation going on in India. I’m also so pleased that we’re doing this at a national scale. I’m pleased that it’s cross-ministry interdisciplinary. So it doesn’t just belong to one ministry who usually would otherwise be at risk of being relegated to this business. It affects economic activity and therefore it affects our growth and therefore it translates down to different regulatory systems and therefore different ministries. So I’m just so happy we’re at this stage of maturity in our discussions on climate. Now that said we’re not an easy country, we’re also a big country. We also have economic activity that is very high and economic activity that is very low. So we’ve got a lot of things going on all in parallel in a huge geographic area. And we have to address everything that we can’t make a solution that doesn’t work for or is worked to the detriment of some. So designing the carbon market system is really key. We have to get that right. And the balance will be to design something that gets to the environmental attributes, meaning it reduces your greenhouse gases so that we as a country can make good on our commitments internationally and to ourselves, of course. We as a country can use a market -based method. We have traded before. We have traded energy efficiency and other things before. So we’re now completely unfamiliar with the business of using markets. We have a lot of corporations who have enough expertise to do the counting. We just have to design it in a way that is sufficiently uncomfortable for business because you should be forced to think about it, yet sufficiently achievable if you think properly, if you have a good strategy. Because that is the balance of getting a good environmental outcome and a good economic outcome.
Shanta Venugopal (16:02)
Yes, thank you. And that’s very interesting to hear from your perspective, especially. But I know you have a hard stop soon, so I want to jump into our last question. This is a question we like to ask all of our speakers, and it’s a two-parter. The first being, what would the childhood version of you make of what you do today? And the second being, do you have any advice for the young people who are going to go on to do these careers in the future?
Mahua Acharya (17:41)
I think my childhood, my child version would look at my adult version and say, what? You’re in an air-conditioned office environment. You are supposed to be out there probably being a conservationist, hanging with wildlife. Because I was an outdoor kid. I was very much the cargo pants, kind of fixing the leeches on my feet. And that was me. So the childhood version of me will look at me and say, whoa, that wasn’t what I was expecting, I think.
What could I tell the younger generation? The business of climate change has so many phases. There’s an environmental phase. There’s an economic phase. There is an innovation phase.
There is technology. People take energy efficiency seriously today. We take resource efficiency seriously. It has many faces because it affects our economy. Choose the face and then decide which one you want to pursue. That affects which company, what kind of work, what kind of growth, what kind of impact you’ll see. You could, of course, look at just the science of it. In science, you see the impact immediately because you’re working on something. So it has many faces. what you want to get inside on.
Shanta Venugopal (18:39)
I think that’s wonderful advice to end our interview on because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do at our podcast, which is to show people the diversity of professional experiences they can use to solve the climate problem that we’re all facing today. So thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today and for sharing your wisdom with us. We really, really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thanks once again to both of you and look forward to when this gets launched and good luck with your series.
