Travel a key target for platform that aligns procurement to empower local communities and environment

Armed with a masters in systems engineering, Singapore-based Israeli entrepreneur Tali Goldman was working mainly in the aero defence industry when she decided to switch career paths about 10 years ago to start a business for social impact.

“The highest mission of every person is to create an impact and help others,” she said.

She started Dagiz, a combination of her children’s names. “I did it for them and because of then, to show them that we should care for other people.”

Tali Goldman:  “Market For Good offers a quantitative solution – we can quantify social and environment impact of any vendor’s goods and services, and we have our own carbon emissions calculator.”

What Dagiz did was to match businesses with socially-responsible suppliers. “We’d hire people with disabilities to work in finance and operations, and our delivery people were ex-offenders, to give them a second chance.”

She grew Dagiz into a marketplace that helped 48 charities in Singapore which, in turn, represented 50,000 beneficiaries to have sustainable livelihoods.

She found though that without technology at its core, she could not scale Dagiz beyond the 48 social organizations she had in her network. So in June 2021, she launched an online platform called Market For Good. “It made sense to build a tech platform because, why stop at 48?”

She put together a tech team to build an online platform for gifts, experiences and services with a social and environmental cause and that connects corporates to beneficiaries, offering a solution for corporate ESG needs and provides empowerment to beneficiaries. The marketplace is integrated with sustainability measurement tools as well has the ability to interface with any procurement systems, thereby aligning procurement to empower local communities and the environment.

Her startup caught the eye of Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise – raiSE which gave Market For Good a grant of S$160,000 to develop the coding for the platform. “We are the first social enterprise to receive funding from raiSE & NCSS to develop a platform.”

It was also chosen in a Google competition as one of top 10 startups in Asia for environmental sustainability.

“Market For Good offers a quantitative solution – we can quantify social and environment impact of any vendor’s goods and services, and we have our own carbon emissions calculator,” she said.

The travel industry is one of her targets, with hotels a key customer base. It already works with brands such as Resorts World Sentosa, Marina Bay Sands, WW Hotels and Hilton. “We help look into their overall practices, including room amenities, dining, and even in-room snacks, and help propose sustainable and impactful alternatives.
For example, for a new hotel launch, one of our clients wanted sustainable coasters that would double as glass covers as well, so we customised recycled plastic coasters for them based on their required dimensions. We also offer sustainable room amenities solutions like cleaning materials.”

It now lists more than 10,000 products and services, mainly in Asia Pacific. Goldman said the average order size is around US$3,000 although the largest has gone up to $250,000 and the smallest order $100.

One breakthrough is becoming approved vendor for corporates such as J&J and Citibank. “We can now work with them because of the Market For Good platform which gives them quantification of impact.”

So far, it’s been self-funded with some angel funds from an impressive advisory board comprising world experts in sustainability, IT, marketing and communications. Two more investors come from her own team.

It is now looking to raise US$3m to scale. “We want to grow bigger and faster,” said Goldman. “We want to invest in the assets we are building and have more visibility. There is no challenge in building supply. The challenge is demand generation and bringing more clients.

“The timing is right now, everyone’s talking about sustainability and social impact so perhaps Market For Good is the right product for the right time.”