Seema brings thought leadership to entities' long-term sustainability and is the inventor of

1) A standardised methodology to discover entities' Purpose

2) The design of entities' qualitative and quantitative universal ESG metrics with comparable* sustainability performance enabling sustainable finance at scale

 

She defines that an entity becomes sustainable for the longterm when it contributes towards its ecosystem directly or indirectly through its multi-stakeholder focus. She extended this definition and her two inventions and created the standardised transformation methodology CTM (Change thru Movement) centred on entities' purpose for its long-term sustainability and has two versions. Its first version (2018) became the foundation for the development & deployment of regTech product Compliance by Design (CBD) for corporate and investment banks with its reusable features around accurate and authentic holistic ratings and quantified underwritings accessible to anyone. It makes the bank clean, robust, purposeful and sustainable for the future. Its second version (2020-22), is again centred on entities' purpose and helps them to achieve their fair share of direct or indirect climate goals and, while doing so, all other UN-SDGs by 2030. Its' full or part deployment helps in deployment and disclosure of standardised versions of just and resilient netZero transition plans for entities across the financial and real economy. These plans, besides purpose discovery at a minimum are designed to include entities' universal ESG metrics with comparable* sustainability performance, while GHG measurements are open to externals. CTM has the concept of a governance framework embedded in these plans. These metrics and their further use in CBD and its re-usable components around holistic ratings and quantified underwritings enable innovation in any sustainable finance products (bonds, funds, indices etc) and are instrumental in mobilising private capital to EMDEs at scale and speed, both through climate capital, transition finance, impact investing, etc. and asset managers financing MSMEs at scale and speed.

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The deployment of the standardised Transformation Methodology CTM (Change thru Movement) (2020-22) generates the qualitative universal ESG metrics from the standardised Movement centred on entities' purpose for their longterm sustainability. This movement initiates a series of projects/transactions for innovation and their rapid scale-ups further leveraging decision worthy data. These projects/transactions finally create outcomes (impacts, financed-impacts, & other indirect impacts) towards the entities' purpose through their multi-stakeholder focus and strive to achieve their required targets. These outcomes will align with their SDGs and ultimately, at the highest level will be mapped with WBG Scorecard's Client Context Indicators. Thus CTM is centred on entities' purpose and aims to achieve their fair share of direct or indirect climate goals and while doing so all other UN-SDGs by 2030.

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In this methodology, the large corporates at the top of their supply chains set targets in alignment with their sectoral pathways and extend them to their supply chains who need to feed into their targeted values. They are also required to set their targeted relative focus across SDGs that must be commensurate with their ideal value. The global standardisation needed for this is assumed in this methodology. Thus she created the High Level Design Concept of Quantitative Universal ESG Metrics including *Comparable Sustainability Performance from these impacts, financed-impacts, other indirect impacts and entities' targeted relative focus across SDGs. It is applicable to corporates as well as FIs with certain design changes and the details can be read here. For the deployment of all these and required disclosures she created the practitioner-led standardised just & resilient NetZero Transition Plans and their deployment and disclosure versions with variations for leading FIs and large corporates (also applicable to Medium Enterprises). She created a simplified standardised variation of it as practitioner-led NZTP-Templates deploying part CTM for small & micro enterprises including Purpose Discovery and applicable universal ESG Metrics. Thus these standardised versions of just & resilient netZero transition plans are applicable to the entire financial and real economy. This economy wide standardised deployment and disclosures (for a very large part) and the standardisation assumed will need policy support from G20 and support from other global entities. If deployed economy wide could also become an effective mechanism for country-level NDCs and solving issue of off-takes faced by Green Hydrogen and similar promising technology and hard to abate sectors that need economies of scale to bring down prices.  

 

The regTech product CBD(Compliance by Design) for corporate and investment banks was developed & deployed based on the initial version of CTM (2018) centred on their Purpose & aiming for a clean, robust and sustainable bank through innovation, culture shift & digital transformation. It solves their challenges in complying with regulations, solves their core issue of data silo, measures corporates' true creditworthiness considering their universal ESG metrics alongside financials and others, quantifies credit and compliance risk more accurately and discretely at each transaction level that can be further rolled up easily and finally to the bank's balance sheet level, creates a bank-wide MIS, enables them to respond to their business requirements with more agility etc. This helps the bank to contribute towards their purpose more powerfully. Its reusable features for holistic ratings and quantified underwritings can be made accessible to anyone. It will help create an authentic, robust and transparent ESG asset class with their universal ESG data traceable and assets ultimately built from investments into corporates with holistic ratings measured accurately and transparently (end of green & SDG washing). This will also help asset managers finance MSMEs at scale in EMDEs and anywhere else. It will help in mobilising private capital at scale and speed apart from other innovation in sustainable finance adding to it.

 

Thus she contributes towards the entity-level systemic change combining all of these components into it, for leading FIs and large corporates extended to their supply chains and also for the rest of the economy. Seema further envisions a curriculum for b-schools and universities on entities' longterm sustainability based on the principles of CTM.

 

Seema is a servant leader and a strategic problem solver through a systems approach, a culture sense-maker and a process & data expert. She had also contributed to regTech product CBD through a standardised methodology for Data Science Projects deploying the use cases in CBD. In her prior career, she worked with Deutsche Bank, SITA, SGX, ING Bank (IBM), ATOS, TechM, TCS and Crompton Greaves for 18+ years, initially based out of Mumbai, & later out of Singapore from 2009-2014, where she further lived and worked for SEEM till 2023 before looking to relocate SEEM to India and another location, went to Mumbai and currently works physically and remotely out of these two locations. At the end of 2017, SEEM was born with a mission "to create an ecosystem that nurtures entities to thrive, grow and become sustainable for the future". She is the founder of SEEM, a sustainability consulting and regTech product company. She has also founded TREEBANK aiming to value each tree as a true asset to own. Seema holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIEST (aka Bengal Engineering College), Shibpur and has valued continuous education and research throughout her career. Outside of work, she loves nature, yoga and family time, which is now rare with her children in university and at job.

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* upon verification by independent bodies, recently launched FAST-infra label by Bloomberg at the WEF, Annual Meeting in Jan 2025 can be achieved through this process as an example.