On 23 April 2026, we hosted our invite-only Sustainability Leaders Circle event, an intimate gathering of sustainability leads from some of the most ambitious companies in the region. The format was deliberately small and deliberately honest: a closed-door conversation about what is actually working, what is not, and where the discipline of sustainability data is heading next.
The afternoon was built around four moments: a look at where Zuno Carbon is headed, a candid round of customer sharing, a first look at our upcoming Veridis 4.0 platform, and an extended networking and demo session over food and drinks. Here is what stood out.
Setting the scene with Zuno Carbon's ambition
We started the afternoon with Hari Nair, CEO and Co-founder of Zuno Carbon, sharing our vision for the company, the strategic bets we're placing and what that means for our customers. Hari highlighted that our ambition is to build the platform that makes that shift feel less painful and more powerful.
Highlight of the afternoon: Peer exchange session
This was the highlight of the afternoon. In this session, each sustainability leader took turns to share their top sustainability priorities and the challenges they're currently navigating. These are the themes that emerged from the session:
1. Reporting expectations are not slowing down, even for unlisted companies
Several leaders in the room are not subject to direct exchange-listing requirements, yet they are already reporting at a level of rigour that rivals listed peers. Pressure now flows down through parent companies, investors, and major customers, and the bar moves up every year. “Requirement creep” is the new normal, and it is reaching organisations that, even two years ago, did not expect to be in scope.
2. Sustainability data is genuinely operational, and increasingly commercial
This was the most striking shift. The leaders in the room are no longer collecting data only to populate a report. They are using it to inform fleet and asset renewal decisions, surface anomalies like utility leaks across sites, justify capex on more efficient equipment, and back up tender submissions where customers now demand sustainability evidence as a condition of doing business. Several attendees described tenders won, and tenders lost, on the strength of their sustainability data alone. Sustainability has become a commercial lever, not just a compliance line item.
3. Scope and granularity are exploding
The data being collected is no longer just emissions across a handful of business units. It now spans social and governance metrics, material-level product data, supplier-level disclosures, and increasingly the evidence behind every number. One leader described going from a handful of business units in scope to more than twenty, with the number of metrics growing tenfold over the same period. Sustainability teams are being asked to manage more ground with similar headcount.
4. The real challenge is part process, part technology
The room was unanimous on this one: a small central team can no longer collect everything itself. Data ownership has to shift down to the people closest to the source, whether that is business unit leads, site managers, or operations staff, and the technology has to make that handoff feel natural rather than like another tax. At the same time, the data has to be auditable. Numbers now need to stand up to internal auditors, external auditors, parent-company reviews, and customer due diligence questionnaires. Process and technology have to reinforce each other, not pull in opposite directions.
These themes will be explored in much greater depth in a forthcoming Zuno Carbon whitepaper. If any of them resonate, let us know. We would love your input as we shape the final piece.
Platform upgrade: Unveiling our new sustainability OS platform
To help users rise up to the challenge, we also announced upcoming major upgrades to our current platform, Veridis.
Our CEO walked through the key capabilities we've been building, from AI-assisted data collection and custom insights, to enhanced analytics and audit-ready reporting disclosure across multiple frameworks.
For more information, you can reach out to us at info@zunocarbon.com.
Wrapping up with networking and personalized demo
We closed the afternoon with refreshments, networking and personalized demo sessions. It was great to see attendees connect with each other, exchange meaningful insights and continue the conversations that had started around the roundtable.
That, ultimately, is why we created the Sustainability Leaders Circle. The work of moving sustainability from ambition to operational reality is hard, and it is much easier when done in good company.
We look forward to seeing you at our next event!
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