Paris, September 9, 2021 – Greenly, the tech start-up specialized in helping organizations lower their carbon emissions, announced a 3 million dollars funding round this week to deploy its carbon accounting SaaS to more SMEs and begin its international development.
Greenly, the technology startup specialized in seamless carbon tracking, announced a new fundraising round in the rapidly expanding sector of GHG emissions reporting. For the company, this is an opportunity to accelerate the deployment of its B2B SaaS, and further develop its technology to help SMEs launch their climate strategy more simply. Greenly’s platform automates carbon accounting in full compliance with international reporting standards (CDP, GHG and TCFD). The platform intends to disrupt the industry by targeting SMEs rather than large enterprises. It is already used by more than a hundred scale-ups and unicorns in France, including Payfit, Swile, Konbini, Foodles, LeoCare, Foodchéri, Outsight, Alma etc.
The market for emission management solutions is estimated anywhere between $10 billion and $26 billion in the next five years. The U.S. Green Deal and new “EU taxonomy for sustainable activities” is putting pressure on businesses to manage their carbon emissions. The obligation to set GHG emissions targets is now trickling down from large corporations to their suppliers.
SUPPORT FROM THE TOP-TIER INVESTORS FROM THE FRENCH TECH SCENE
The startup that first launched a mobile application that automatically tracks individual carbon footprint with banking transactions had raised an initial 600,000 dollars in 2020. This technology was deployed among several banks, including BNPP, to help them track the footprint of their customers and loans. Early seed investors included Cédric Hutchings, CEO of Outsight and co-founder of Withings, Damien Balsan, founder of Loop Pay and Mobeewave, Amélie Caudron, CEO of Invoxia, Geoffroy Roux of Bézieux, president and founder of Notus Technologies.
As it enters a new phase of scaling its carbon accounting SaaS for SMEs, Greenly raised an additional $3M from a set of prestigious tech investors, amongst which Alexandre Prot, CEO and co-founder Qonto, the hottest European neobank, Bertrand Jelensperger, founder of TheFork or Thibault Lanthier, CEO of MonDocteur sold to Doctolib. The round is also supported by VC fund “French Partners”, led by Emilie Loyer Buttiaux, and the BPI, the French Tech Investment arm.
AI-POWERED SAAS TO HELP COMPANIES REDUCE CARBON FOOTPRINT
Fresh with new capital, the green fintech will be able to accelerate the developments of its SaaS software and make carbon footprint tracking even simpler for SMEs. One of Greenly’s key added values is to automate carbon analytics, using data accessible through APIs, namely accounting data or billing information from large GHG emission contributors. Greenly has developed an AI-powered analytics & recommendation engine to suggest practical ways to reduce one’s emissions, for example suggesting less carbon-intensive alternatives to suppliers.
For a tech company, digital services typically represent 50% of its emissions, for instance, because of electricity consumed by data centres running on carbon-intensive energy sources, which is typically the case for Amazon Web Service. Using costing APIs from such services, Greenly is able to automate tracking of carbon-related emissions and recommend mitigation measures automatically, for instance by suggesting hosting data in a less carbon-intensive State or minimizing the usage of instances that use machines that consume far too much energy. Customers are able to rank and engage their suppliers according to climate commitments.
Greenly thus offers its customers the possibility of setting Science-Based Target by activity type, in order to align the company’s footprint with the path set by the Paris Agreement on climate change. Last but not least, Greenly’s software trains users on the fundamentals of climate change and corporate climate strategy, even gamifying carbon reduction initiatives through in-app challenges.
GLOBAL AMBITION FOR A GLOBAL PROBLEM
Created in 2019 by entrepreneurs who first worked at Withings, Alexis Normand, Matthieu Vegreville and Arnaud Delubac now want Greenly to become a global leader in corporate carbon accounting. It will use its funds to expand the technical & R&D teams, recruit more carbon footprint experts, and build a sales team capable of scaling beyond France, in Europe and the United States. Greenly’s goal is to go from a few hundred customers to a few thousand.
For Alexis Normand, CEO and co-founder, “Greenly’s vision is that all companies should play a role in fighting against global warming. You cannot improve something you don’t measure. But you also need simple tools that any SME can use to make this measure and reduction within reach. We had to invent the software that merges financial and carbon accounting. We are proud to contribute to this revolution. ”
For Alexandre Prot, investor at Greenly, cofondateur & CEO of Qonto, the néobanque for entrepreneurs and SMEs: “It is now obvious that carbon accounting will concern all types of companies, even very small ones. Greenly is shaping this new standard, helping everyone to act on climate change. They must scale very fast, because their work is necessary, if we want to effectively reduce global warming.”
