Startup Circle: WeNaturalists - A social media platform for environment lovers and enthusiasts!

WeNaturalists is a global ecosystem for nature professionals, enthusiasts, and organizations working towards conserving and protecting nature. It is a space for over 500 million nature professionals like conservationists, wildlife professionals, field guides, researchers, content creators. Further, there are over 10 million nature organizations like NGOs, educational institutions, eco-tourism businesses, charities, and eco-businesses who come together in a strong, global nature network.

By bringing people together, WeNaturalists bridges a big gap between supply and demand, while providing this community, a place where they can belong. “There is a need to connect people to find solutions together, in unprecedented ways. This is our vision at WeNaturalists. We aim at creating the largest ecosystem for people working in nature from around the world,” states Amit Banka, Founder and CEO of WeNaturalists.

People working in Nature have different needs related to their work, profile and portfolio building, livelihood, learning, communication, and funding. Further, the evolved needs of the Nature Community are not met by any other platform today. These include:

• Frequent and consistent livelihood opportunities
• Access to continuous learning and upskilling
• Quality engagement with a relevant audience
• Recognition and visibility for work and contribution
• Easy and recurrent access to other professionals and experts globally
• Lack of funding environment for opportunities created

WeNaturalists aims to empower this community. We provide customized tools that enable them to create visibility for their contribution. They can also find new work prospects and explore learning opportunities. Further, the platform enables them to collaborate with experts, partner with organizations; in all, create a larger positive impact.

About the team

WeNaturalists is an output of efforts by some of the most passionate people who have worked through the entire Covid 19 crisis to ensure that the nature community stays connected and actively engaged while practising recommended safety measures. It currently has a bright, young team of creators, techies, designers, writers, marketers, sector experts, and above all, nature lovers. It’s a team of 25, led by the Founder and CEO Amit Banka.

Amit Banka is the Founder and CEO of WeNaturalists. He started this ecosystem with a simple motive; to give a purpose to people’s passion for nature. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, he is an ardent nature lover, wilderness explorer, and bird photographer. He has led a distinguished career over two decades and spanning across sectors including successful stints with various corporate houses including Disney UTV Group and Zee Group. He has also founded multiple ventures in business transformation, crowdfunding, online gaming, and F&B.

A critical milestone in his life occurred while he was working with Zarina and Ronnie Screwvala’s Swades Foundation, on holistic living projects in rural India. It was here where he realized the need for mankind to coexist with nature, and more importantly, our dependence on it. The learnings from these interventions reinforced his belief that our interaction with nature needs to evolve to create a larger impact. This tremendously influenced his outlook towards creating WeNaturalists.

Excerpts of the QnA with Amit Banka, CEO and CoFounder, WeNaturalists.

How important is technology to save the world? In fact, isn’t it counterproductive – Tech helping to save the planet?

Technology is an integral part of innovation. These innovations have the potential to create a nature-positive planet. Our entire effort is directed towards it - where every positive move, every innovation, every effort towards conservation is amplified and celebrated by everyone around the world. There is no way we can ignore technology.

Technology isn’t saving the planet, instead, digital tools are aiding nature in unique ways. Through a tech-enabled ecosystem, WeNaturalists is empowering the people who are working in nature to save the planet. WeNaturalists is a catalyst. The role of a catalyst, when you are planning a global footprint. Further, scaling is not possible unless we use technology to its advantage. This is while fostering community participation and a sense of belonging.

How is ‘WeNaturalists’ helping your social cause?

We would say, WeNaturalists is helping a larger cause. And our cause is empowering, enabling, and inspiring the 500 million people working in nature so that they can further inspire, motivate, and bring awareness to the remaining 6.5 billion people to contribute to a nature-positive world. We endeavour to take our learnings in nature to every household, to every individual on the planet.

How does the future for “WeNaturalists” look like? Are you expanding?

WeNaturalists is currently hosting members from over 140 countries. We plan to deepen our reach in every geography. We are also expanding our global team to help us in this endeavour. The biggest difference that WeNaturalists would make is overcoming the geographic limitation. We would be bringing more than 500 million and 10 million organizations worldwide together and empowering their voice, like never before.

In terms of the platform, we are working on some new and exciting features that will make this ecosystem more holistic and valuable to all members. So, we can say, the future is green for WeNaturalists.