The majority of what we consume every day whether it’s food, personal care products, or even construction materials start life on a specific piece of land. For most of the companies that buy and process these commodities, that "first mile" has long been a significant blind spot. Agricultural and forestry supply chains have run on averages, questionnaires and trust. That opacity has led to poor decisions and fragile systems: supply chains that are exposed to drought, flood, fire and disease; and without clarity on the deforestation and emissions embedded in them.

Epoch exists to change that. Its mission is to de-commoditise supply chains through first-mile data, putting information about the plot, the farm and the forest edge into the hands of the people making decisions. Using geospatial AI and satellite data, Epoch generates compliance-ready data on deforestation, emissions, water and biodiversity, without asking suppliers to fill in another questionnaire.

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The team

The first and most important reason we invested was Jinal and William. They have exceptional founder-market fit.

Jinal spent years at Ripple, where he was the first product marketing hire and led go-to-market for its enterprise payments product from zero to over a hundred enterprise clients. He was then a founding executive at Menai. William co-founded SoilWatch and was its CTO, building satellite-based measurement of carbon in landscapes. He is a long-time builder with earth observation data and AI.

Few teams pair this depth of geospatial science with enterprise go-to-market experience. Just as important, both are in this for the right reasons, which gives us confidence that Epoch will not drift from the impact it set out to achieve. These highly capable founders have also brought together a team of exceptional talent and experience to help them build the essential data infrastructure underpinning the markets of tomorrow.

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The market

Demand for supply chain transparency is growing extraordinarily fast. Driven in part by regulation, including the EU Deforestation Regulation, and a pipeline of further international requirements which are on the way. But moving beyond regulation clarity of the first-mile also allows businesses to better manage it. Compliance data becomes business intelligence: where risk is concentrated, which suppliers to back, and where to invest in resilience.

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A supply chain managed with nature in mind is also a more resilient one, better able to withstand shocks of weather, water shortage and disease. This is the lockstep Sand River looks for, where commercial growth and positive impact on nature rise together. It also rests on demand that exists today, which is driving Epoch's impressive growth.

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The product and distribution

Plenty of companies are trying to help businesses make sense of their supply chains. What stood out about Epoch was its pragmatism: a clear understanding of what is realistic, and of what actually stands in their customers' way.

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Epoch has taken a comprehensive view and built a single first-mile data layer. It distributes that data through the platforms supply chain teams already use, reaching large corporates and SMEs alike. Customers can access it through an API, agentic and MCP integrations, or Epoch's own interface, in a highly cost-effective manner. We believe Epoch is best placed to become the base data layer, the single source of truth, for the first mile.

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Our role

Epoch is exactly the kind of company we started Sand River to find and support. We were proud to join its pre-seed extension and then to co-lead its seed round alongside Burnt Island Ventures.