MakeMyTrip 'carbon-neutral' with Climes

(Yes, we are mildly enthusiastic about brand partners and wordplay)

Some of us here at Climes watched the reboot of the 1986 Tom Cruise classic, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. Watching the movie brought with it the slightly traumatic memory of Val Kilmer being cast as Batman. Some things never leave you, I guess.

The movie was riveting, shot for the big screen, and with drama that somehow felt acceptable because it involved the son of Goose, confusingly named Rooster, and even more confusingly not played by (Ryan) Gosling.

As we walked out of the movies, someone said 'What if there was a way to neutralise fighter-jet emissions?' and none of us could stop thinking about it after.

We will be the first to concede that it sounds (a little) ludicrous. But hear us out here.

Is it really? Especially when we pulled off the exact same thing with commercial flights the same weekend we watched a movie that milked all available nostalgia for two different generations.

On June 5th, which is also incidentally the World Environment Day, Climes signed a partnership with India’s leading online travel company, MakeMyTrip.

Customers booking their flights on MakeMyTrip can now choose to fly carbon-neutral with every flight ticket they purchase. They can neutralise the emissions from their air travel entirely or partially, by contributing to certified carbon removal projects from the Climes portfolio. The projects are located in India, and focus on increasing biodiversity through agroforestry and restoring degraded lands, with more being added every month.

One-click-is-all-it-takes for meaningful climate action - with due acknowledgement to the super famous, half-soprano singer-songwriter, this is the core driving force behind everything that emerges from our Climes HQ.

What better way to allow people to take one-click-climate action than by partnering with their favourite online brands? There is the obvious upside too of helping brands go climate-friendly swiftly.

'Behind the scenes' of this partnership

The cool kids (aka our super talented tech team) built this frictionless expressway to climate action.

We are not overstating when we say we have deployed a one-of-a-kind API technology that is both accurate and scalable.

Okay, we may be. But when you consider the simplicity of design and the ease with which it can be implemented, can you blame us?

Our tech team has built a precise and granular mathematical model to calculate each flyer’s footprint, using data from ICAO - a specialised UN agency with verified methodologies for calculating flight emissions. The model incorporates data for aircraft make, occupancy data, cabin classes, and fuel efficiencies across all global routes.

(For the privacy nerds out there, we only pull the flight details and not a single personal datapoint or identifier.)

It is also designed to be deployed with minimum effort. The entire integration can be accessed through a simple link on every flyer’s e-ticket. The result is a super-fast integration from start to finish (something we obsess about at Climes), and a super-convenient way for customers to opt-in to climate action with a single click.

Speaking on the partnership, Vipul Prakash, Chief Operating Officer, MakeMyTrip said, “With Climes, we are looking forward to empowering travellers with options that allow them to make sustainable choices and do their bit for the environment even when travelling. Through this initiative, we hope to bring forth a behavioural change amongst travellers by helping them think sustainable-first when booking travel in the future.”

Mr. Prakash got it right when he spoke about behavioural change. If we want to reverse our climate trajectory, we need all hands on deck and stat.

We are possibly delusional to think that it is our personal responsibility at Climes to help everybody take that first step in their climate journey, and everybody includes both brands and consumers. Delusional or not, we take our responsibility quite seriously.

We got plenty more where that came from. Who knows? We may soon be neutralising fighter-jet emissions :)

Here’s the media coverage on the partnership.

Are you a consumer brand that wants to offer climate action to your customers?

Get in touch with us.