Exclusive Interview: This Startup Is Creating A Social Platform For Nature Lovers Across The World!

What happens when a startup aims to connect all nature lovers, and strive to bring them into one platform?

To find the answers, we interviewed Amit Banka, Founder and CEO at WeNaturalists, which was founded with a single mission to “give purpose to people’s passion for nature.”

Here are the highlights..

1. Tell us about WeNaturalists and the idea behind it.

WeNaturalists is a global ecosystem for nature professionals, enthusiasts, and organizations working in nature.

People across the globe are tirelessly working to conserve, preserve and protect nature. But it’s still a scattered segment. Today, we need an informed generation to tackle the nature crises. WeNaturalists is empowering the people of nature with the right set of tools for a unified voice. These customized tools enable them to create visibility for their contribution, find new work prospects, explore learning opportunities, collaborate with experts, partner with organizations, and create a larger positive impact.

It is a space for nature professionals like conservationists, wildlife professionals, field guides, researchers, content creators, and nature organizations like NGOs, educational institutions, eco-tourism businesses, charities, and eco-businesses to come together to form a strong, global nature network. By bringing people together, WeNaturalists bridges a big gap between supply and demand related to jobs, assignments, projects, grants, events, upskilling, education and training – while providing this community with an ecosystem where they can belong.

2. What are the major reasons behind introducing WeNaturalists as a vertical social media platform for environmentalists? 

The world is moving towards specialists and experts. When it comes to the climate and nature crisis – we are turning our attention to people with technical know-how. This is why a nature network is essential for nature professionals. When our communication is directed at the right people, cutting through the noise, we can hope to work better and gain a lot more. It’s always more impactful to go deeper. 

3. What is the business model of the platform? 

The world is moving towards the “Come for the Network and pay for the Tools” concept. WeNaturalists’ ecosystem provides tools that are not presently available to this community on a single global platform. 

Organizations will be able to reach out to the relevant audience for projects, volunteering, fundraising, hiring and ease of communication with their Circle. And, individuals will be able to find global growth opportunities at one place – for livelihood and upskilling, while interacting with the world’s best naturalists and participating in some of the greatest movements happening around the world. 

The current model serves two purposes – bringing the community together for a unified voice and creating a sustainable business model. It has the potential to impact livelihoods for the whole community, catalyze education and awareness for the rest of the world and thereby, lead to a measurable impact.

4. Technology is an integral part of startups to focus and adapt. How important is technology to save the environment? Tell us about the technological structure of the platform?

Yes, technology is truly an integral part of a startup, it’s particularly essential for this community. There are countless people working independently or in organizations, NGOs, etc. whose work will never make it to Google search. They work at the grassroots and provide solutions for local problems. But their work has a global impact and it deserves to be amplified. This tech-enabled ecosystem helps in bringing like-minded people together across geographies and provides them with a curated recommendation interface. We are trying to inspire global social collaboration and collective action and all our features work towards this objective. 

WeNaturalists brings a confluence of social, content, tools, and commerce through technology. For instance, people doing some phenomenal work in nature and literally saving our planet every day, have no platform to talk about their work and share their knowledge, except

through blogs on their website or social media. With the Experience Showcase feature of WeNaturalists – one can add all their experience in a visual, collaborative timeline, and invite reviews and comments from everyone. It becomes a repertoire of their work for anyone to see, hire, collaborate with them – a lifelong asset for them.

With the Explore feature, all nature-related news, and stories from over sixty global publications appear on the Daily Edition, customized to user preferences and interests.

We also have Circles, for creating an invite-only community of like-minded people to engage and exchange ideas with.

We also have a dedicated space for everyone believing in an environmental cause to express opinions and exchange solutions for that cause with the Causes feature. We have other features like private and public messaging rooms, forums, and polls. And we foresee an extensive use of technology and advancements in the aggregation of data scattered around the world and powered with AI for an immersive experience. 

5. How WeNaturalists is building up the community online to communicate globally about on-going environmental issues and what kind of major steps have been taken throughout the journey?

It’s an ecosystem specially designed for the people of nature. Our communication with the stakeholders and our ability to inspire open communication on the platform is helping people voice their opinion through original content created in the form of blogs, vlogs, audio & video and pictures. It also addresses the existing pain points of this community – a major driver for discussing issues related to climate change, global warming, etc. The approach that we have taken helps discovery of people, opportunities, learning, and communication as never before.

6. Tell us about the growth story of the platform from inception and future plans in terms of expansion, funding, technology, hirings etc.

WeNaturalists was launched in November 2020 on an invite-only basis. After successful closed-group testing and affirmation of the potential and deliverability of the platform, we opened the gates to the world in January with the web and mobile application.

Since then, we have seen web traffic of over 15,000 users from more than 100 countries. About 39% of our user base is from Asia, 31% from the Americas, 27% from Africa and Europe.

We have received remarkable feedback from the users, partners, dignitaries, and contributors. We have already proved the potential of commerce generation and collaboration in this short time. We hope to reach over 1 million users globally within a year.

We are running at full throttle across all functions and facets currently. We are coming up with a couple of interesting, new features to enhance the user journey. The focus now is on community outreach and increasing engagement across different features and tools.

If I have to mention some critical measures in the short term – we plan to establish a global presence with offices in 3 major continents within the next few months. A Global Advisory Council is on the anvil to help us in shaping the ecosystem better and treading new paths carefully. We are also growing our team further and building it to align with our vision is going to be another key focus area.

Having said that, now since the product is well accepted by the users, we will be looking to fundraise to achieve our organizational goals.