File 02 · The method
Karat is not a supply-chain platform. It is a narrow instrument that answers one question: was this claim verified, refuted, or unverifiable when you relied on it?
The method
Karat is not a supply-chain management platform. It is a supplier claim assurance layer, a narrow instrument that answers one critical question: was this specific claim verified, refuted, or unverifiable at the moment your organization relied on it?
Type one thing a supplier claims, "we hold ISO 14001," "we filed under Bill S-211." Karat reads the live public web, regulator catalogues, certification registries, published disclosures, and stamps one of three honest verdicts, each bound to the exact source and passage it was checked against. The verdict is time-stamped and sealed with an Ed25519 signature so it can never be silently altered.
Companies love to quietly delete a promise. Once a claim is checked, Karat keeps watching its source, and the instant a public commitment is altered or memory-holed, it mints a signed, dated snapshot of the change. A contradiction sweep re-opens old verdicts and hunts for fresh adverse evidence: a sanctions listing, a revoked certificate, a forced-labour finding.
Every verdict and monitoring event rolls up into a sealed evidence dossier mapped to Bill S-211, ISO 14001, ISO 28000, and the EU CSDDD, but only where the evidence supports the mapping. Anyone can independently re-check the signature and the cited sources. Refused and unverifiable claims are surfaced as disclosed gaps, never hidden. That honesty is what makes the rest trustworthy.
The position
Karat doesn't compete with EcoVadis, Sedex, or your procurement platform, it substantiates them. Those tools collect and score self-reported data. Karat independently proves it against the public record and makes the evidence portable and tamper-evident.
ESG platforms · questionnaires · ratings
Karat by GNOSIS
Not a competitor. The evidence they're missing.
The wave
Canada's Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act becomes law, moving supplier due diligence from voluntary to statutory.
Reporting begins May 31. Public Safety Canada's catalogue becomes a live public record of supply-chain claims. Weeks later, the EU adopts the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
UFLPA detentions pass US$3.6B. Annual S-211 cycles compound. Buyers begin asking suppliers to substantiate, not just attest.
The largest companies in and selling into the EU must demonstrate chain-wide due diligence. Every regime converges on one question: can you prove what your suppliers told you?
The Newfoundland & Labrador wedge
Offshore, energy, resource, industrial, and public procurement, environments where a single unverified supplier claim carries legal, operational, and reputational weight. Built in the context of the Cenovus / Mitacs / Memorial University Centre of Excellence pilot in Sales and Supply Chain Management.
The highest-value claims to trace first: