Why we started, how it grew, and why we are still here.
1
Everyone asked for ESG. Almost no one could say where to learn it.
Investors wanted it. Regulators were drafting it. Buyers put it in their supplier forms. And the people inside companies, the ones who had to actually do it, were piecing it together from webinars and PDFs.
There was plenty of talk about why ESG matters. There was almost nowhere to learn how to do it: how to measure a footprint, structure a disclosure, or defend a number to an auditor.
The gap
2
So we started with one room.
No platform, no brand to speak of. A room, a handful of working professionals from banks, factories and NGOs, and teachers who had done the work themselves. The rule was simple: teach what practitioners really use, and make every person leave able to do something they could not do that morning.
Word spread the way it does among colleagues. One bank team became several. One factory became a supply chain.
About six years of classrooms
3
Then we tied it to standards people trust.
Good teaching was not enough. Employers and regulators needed to know what a certificate meant. So we built a ladder: the Diploma in ESG, Sustainability Reporting and Assurance (ESGSRA), the Certified ESG Specialist credential (CESGS), and a path on to the IFRS Foundation’s Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) Credential.
We took the accreditations, partnerships and quality frameworks seriously, because a credential is only worth what stands behind it.
500+ professionals certified
Accreditations
What stands behind a certificate
Recognition from the bodies that set the bar for ESG and sustainability education.
Authorized Education ProviderIFRS FoundationFor the FSA Credential. The only active provider of its kind in South Asia.
Knowledge PartnerUN Global Compact Network BangladeshTrusted to help shape ESG learning for the local business community.
AccreditedCBEC CanadaAccreditation for our CESGS and ESGSRA programmes.
RegisteredCPD UKContinuing professional development recognition for our training.
Course design alignedISO/IEC 40180Our course design follows its guidance on quality for learning, education and training.
Training alignedISO 21001:2025Our training practice is aligned to the education management standard. Aligned, not certified.
Where we say “aligned”, we mean our design and practice follow the standard. We do not claim certification to it.
Partners
Who we build with
Institutions, exchanges and companies that have put their name beside ours.
UN Global Compact Network BangladeshPartner
SwisscontactPartner
Dhaka Stock ExchangePartner
ConcitoPartner
PRAN-RFL GroupCorporate partner
SwapnoSwapnoCorporate partner
The wider community
Organisations whose people have trained with ESG Institute
500+ professionals across FMCG, RMG, banking, NBFIs, NGOs, INGOs, academia and consulting have completed ESG Institute certifications.
4
Then it became bigger than a classroom.
Once people were trained, they wanted somewhere to go next. So we wrote the books we wished existed. We gathered 200+ companies and 21 facilitators for the ESG Bootcamp. And we co-organised Bangladesh’s first national ESG awards with the UN Global Compact Network Bangladesh, honouring 35 winners across 20 categories.
Through all of it, the same people kept showing up: the mentors and facilitators below.
Regulators, bank and factory sustainability leads, UN and WHO officers and global ESG advisors. Practitioners first, teachers because they chose to be.
Joanne FlinnChairperson, ESG Institute SingaporeChowdhury Liakat AliDirector, Sustainable Finance Dept., Bangladesh BankKhondkar Morshed MillatFaculty, BIBM; former Director, SFD, Bangladesh BankAhmed Zubaer MahbubAdditional Director, SFD, Bangladesh BankM. Kamrul HasanJoint Director, Bangladesh BankKarimul TuhinSustainable finance professionalDr. Mohammad Afroz JalilCo-Founder & CSO, NAMMCON · PharmaMohammad Monower HossainHead of Sustainability, TEAM Group · RMGABM Faqrul AlamGroup Sustainability Lead, Urmi GroupAsim MondalESG and sustainability professional · RMGFarah SharmeenAdjunct Faculty, BRAC University · FMCGMabrur Mujib ChowdhuryProgram Manager, UN GCNB · Anti-corruptionJuliana Awo Quist LawsonStakeholder Engagement, UN GCNBZahidul HassanCEO, CSR & Sustainability, Shanta HoldingsSaumitra Kumar MutsuddiHead of Corporate Affairs, BSRM GroupKhandaker Lutful KhaledSocial policy, ESG & sustainability specialistNargis AkterNational Professional Officer, WASH, WHOMuhammad Faisal HasanExecutive Engineer, BPDBM Nazmul Ahsan KhanHead of Supply Chain, Bangla Trac EngineeringMd. Arif Raihan MaahiFounder, Devtale Partners · Supply chainAshraf Ul IslamClean energy expert
Voices
In their words
Learners and leaders on what ESG Institute changed for them.
Featured voice
Galib Nakib Rahman
Senior Executive, Dhaka Stock Exchange
Mohammad Monower HossainHead of Sustainability, TEAM Group
Syeda Shaila AshrafHR, Admin & Sustainability Head, Renaissance Group
Shahed Md ArifuzzamanFinance and Analyst Manager, Renata PLC
Zahir Uddin Mohammad Babur KhanDeputy Director, Chevron
M Majedul IslamCompany Secretary, Bashundhara Paper Mills Limited
5
Rooms don’t scale. So we built Huny a home.
We could only teach as many people as fit in a room, on the days we could run one. Meanwhile ESG professionals everywhere, from Dhaka to Nairobi to Lisbon, were asking the same question: where can I learn this properly, in the time I actually have?
Hivedemy is our answer: short, hands-on lessons where Huny the bee teaches first, asks you to do the work, and tells you why on every attempt. A hive for learning, and an academy inside it.
Hivedemyby ESGIB
Done reading? Learn ESG by doing.
Hivedemy turns ESG into short, hands-on lessons built and checked by professionals worldwide. Every lesson teaches first, then asks you to do the work, and every attempt gets a reason.
Your first lesson is free, before you sign up
Every course ends in a certificate anyone can verify online
Country laws and frameworks from Asia, Africa and Europe
Introducing Hivedemy, where ESG is learned by doing.
Knowing what the terms mean isn't the job. The job is sorting a supplier's emissions, choosing what matters, and writing a report someone can follow. Reading alone won't get you there.
So we set out to build a class you can take at your own pace, where you do the work instead of watching it. Every lesson is hands-on, built and checked by professionals worldwide, and guided by a small bee named Huny. This is the story of how we got here, and why Huny ended up needing a home.
Six years in a room
ESGIB started with a plan to teach ESG properly. Six years later, more than 500 professionals have earned our certificates, from banks, garment factories, pharma, FMCG, telecom and NGOs.
A room has limits. It meets on set days, in one place, for the people who can be there. We wanted the same care to reach people we'll never meet in one.
The hard part: a class that moves at your speed
Self-paced and interactive both sound easy on a slide. Put them together and they're hard.
In a room, a teacher sees a puzzled face and walks over. On a screen, nobody sees anything. A self-paced lesson has to notice for itself when you're stuck, and answer you without making you wait or feel slow. Interactive can't mean a video with a pause button. The lesson has to react to what you actually do.
The same moment, in a room and on a screen.
ESG makes it harder. The material is long, dense and full of terms. Learners arrive at every level, from "what is CSR" to ten years in the field. And almost nobody has hours to spare.
ESG arrives as a heavy document: a standard, a framework, a buyer's checklist. We decided to cut it into pieces short enough to finish in a sitting, where every piece has you do something.
One heavy document becomes pieces you can finish in a sitting.
Three rules came out of that.
Short. Every lesson is small enough that starting doesn't feel like a commitment.
Teach first. Nothing is tested before it has been explained.
Answer every attempt. Right or wrong, you get a reason, not just a tick or a cross.
Every lesson is built in-house, animated and interactive, and checked by professionals worldwide. Every claim is verified against valid sources before a lesson goes out. And you can try the first lesson before you even sign up.
Teach first. Then ask.
Every lesson opens with an idea, a story, a real case or a real number. Then you try it. Then you're told why you were right or wrong. The lessons start from the very basics: what CSR is, what sustainability means, how ESG came to be. We don't test a term we haven't taught.
A lesson clip: the idea first, then one question, then the reason.
We drew a forest, then deleted it
Early on, our map of the app was a forest: trees, branches and leaves. It looked clever. We dropped all of it. A career has courses, a course has lessons, and you sit exams. Call things what they are.
The words we deleted, and the ones we kept.
Meet Huny
Huny is a bee, and he's your guide through every lesson.
He says hello when a lesson opens. When you miss, he tells you why. When you get it right, he jumps and throws confetti, and he does the same when you level up or pass an exam. When your energy runs out, he falls asleep on a flower until you're back.
He doesn't do the work for you. He keeps you company while you do it.
Huny says hello, cheers a win, and sleeps when your energy runs out.
Why a bee
Nobody builds a hive alone. Every bee does one small job, every day, and the hive grows from that. Learning works the same way. One lesson won't change your career, but a hundred will.
A bee also makes something you can see. Honey is what you collect, and every finished lesson should add a little to your day. And hexagon cells fit together with no gaps, which is how lessons, courses and careers should fit.
A guide matters most when the route is worth walking. Here is what's on it.
Built for the work
Pick by career, by industry, by how much you already know. Country laws are covered from Asia to Africa to Europe.
ESG
Materiality
Reporting
Emissions accounting
IFRS S1 and S2 basics
ESG for RMG
ESG for banks
Sustainable finance
Higg
SBTi
CDP
amfori
Sedex
Country laws
Every course ends in a certificate, and anyone can check it online.
Huny needed a home
Huny began as the face of the app we wanted to build, and for a while he was also its name. A bee is a good name for a bee. It's a weak name for a certificate, and it couldn't hold everything we were building: careers, courses, exams, and other people's courses too.
So we gave him a home. The home needed a name that sounds like learning, looks right in a frame, and doesn't belong to one topic. Hive plus academy gives you Hivedemy. Huny keeps his name and his job as your guide. On the page it reads Hivedemy by ESGIB.
The logo took two tries. We drew a bee band first. Nobody understood it, so it's gone. What stayed is a dark, rounded hexagon holding five comb cells that form an H.
The Comb H, on light and on dark.
And room for more bees
A home that only fits one bee isn't a hive. ESGIB built the first rooms. If Hivedemy takes off, ESGIB keeps its niche ESG products and certifies them inside the hive. Universities, schools and other institutes can do the same, under one certificate standard.
Many institutions, one certificate standard.
We're just getting started
Next come more courses, more country laws, and more bees. We spent six years teaching ESG in rooms, and Hivedemy is how it reaches everyone else.
Huny needed a home. Now he has one, and there's room for more bees.
UN Global Compact Network Bangladesh
Swisscontact
Dhaka Stock Exchange
Concito
