SPOTLIGHT: Using AI to help underserved communities address social and environmental issues
NIKHIL BHAMBI
Co-founder / CEO / vice chairperson
Narralytics, Inc
Bakersfield, California
What did you do early in your career?
I abstained from the innate pressures of entering the family business of being a doctor and got into investment banking. But by December 2019, I was burned out and looking to change careers. I intended to pursue a biotech career, but a few months later, COVID upends the world. It was really a period for me to find myself. I started applying to various nonprofits to use skills I gained as an investment banker for good. Eventually, I was volunteering for an environmental health equity think-tank called the Pittsburgh Platform. This was my “Sustainability 101” course.
What motivated you to make climate your career?
One of our team members was talking about the significance of green spaces. I rolled my eyes – how big of a deal can a park be, right? After the call, I looked at a map of urban heating in Richmond, Va. It showed summertime temperature differences between certain regions reached 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Then I realized that map was identical to another one showing Richmond’s formerly redlined neighborhoods. That was a lightbulb moment: Climate change isn’t just an environmental crisis. It’s a social crisis, too.
What did you do next?
I co-founded an early-stage climate tech company called Narralytics. We’re developing an AI-powered software platform that makes it easy, effective and financially compelling for U.S. businesses to use data to measure, report and optimize their social and environmental impacts within underserved communities. We’ve raised $275,000, we’re looking to raise another $500,000, and we’re hoping to commercialize by summer 2024.
What sets your company apart from other data analytics companies?
We record stories in frontline communities. Using enabling technologies like large language models and natural language processing, we take unstructured narratives and turn them into structured data and integrate it with our quantitative insights to ensure our analytics are ultimately contextualized, enriched and validated by the lived experiences of the communities we intend to serve. Our business hypothesis is simple: It’s that who is better to identify and co-develop solutions for systemic inefficiencies than the frontline communities which deal with these issues day-in, day-out.
Where are you piloting your product?
The model is most attuned to cities. Initially, the markets we’re going to be servicing are Watts and Compton, two neighborhoods in southern Los Angeles. But it’s challenging. I’m not a native of those communities, I’m an outsider. Compounding that, I’m representing a data analytics company. A lot of these communities have been poked and prodded by various institutions over the years with little to no change occurring. You have to combat a lot of skepticism.
What do you think about public investments like the IRA and the Justice40 Initiative?
Trillions of dollars will be spent over the next few decades decarbonizing the economy and instituting a just transition. There are probably good ways and less good ways to do that. And robust independent analysis and community engagement can help support better decision-making and allocate capital more efficiently and equitably. We did a line-by-line review of the IRA, and we estimated that in underserved urban communities, there can be as much as $78 billion allocated. That’s huge. It represents a shift in shift in philosophy in how we address the climate crisis.
How so?
The IRA signals something of a shift in U.S. policy away from globalization toward a more nationally focused industrial policy. Since the ’80s, the dominant paradigm has been that free markets and low barriers to international trade are the most effective and efficient way to allocate goods and
services. And it’s a paradigm in which the economy is, in some ways, de-politicized, with markets autonomous and self-correcting. But the last few years three developments have shaken some of this faith in globalization and free markets – COVID, the energy crisis in Europe, and finally the more general push toward supporting domestic industry and reducing outsourcing to countries that may have lower labor costs and labor standards. And I think it’s highly likely that Hamas’s attack on Israel, Iran’s purported backing of that attack, and the growing regional instability will lead to a spike and overall volatility in crude prices, further substantiating a shift toward a more nationally focused industrial policy.
What does this have to do with the IRA?
This means the IRA is poised to spur and accelerate the energy transition. I think the sustainability boom can have the same massive scale of the Industrial Revolution. But due to enabling technologies like artificial intelligence, like the Internet of Things and the prevalence of data, it will happen much more quickly. It will have the speed of the digital age.
