How Greenly Helps your Company Get an EcoVadis Label
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What is an EcoVadis label, why is it important, and how can Greenly help you acquire it?
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Greenly raises $23M to scale carbon management & accounting
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Co-led by European and American investment funds, Greenly is proud to announce our closure on a $23 million Series A funding, helping bring carbon management to all companies and fast-track the transition to a net-zero-carbon economy! While raising funds is not an end in itself, it does allow us to be more ambitious and have more impact. Together with our robust technology and excellent human support, our mission remains unchanged: to avoid one billion tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
Numbers aside, Greenly’s vision is all about limiting the scope of global warming by helping businesses on their path to Net Zero. This enormous support from investors reveals a major turning point in the fight against climate change. Today, carbon management is (finally!) becoming top of mind across all industries. With more than 400 corporate customers already committed, Greenly is becoming a key player in the carbon accounting sphere. Its SaaS software has been rolled out all over Europe and the United States where awareness of climate change is more relevant than ever (as seen with the new regulations proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
🍀 Democratizing carbon accounting: How it all started (Greenly’s story)
Once upon a startup… 🌱
Early 2020 in the midst of the Covid turmoil, we decided to launch a mobile application to help individuals track their carbon footprint and make better consumption choices. The vision was to empower individuals by making monitoring easier, allowing them to change their habits and reduce their carbon footprint. Back then, the application was called V1.0. A patronymic worthy of Star Wars…! 💫
One can say that we’ve been greatly inspired by the myth of the infamous "garage rock star bands'' (the ones that started in a garage plunged into darkness). If anything, their model convinced us that their approach would bring good luck, explaining why our three co-founders began in the basement of a Parisian communication agency. Unfortunately, without the guitars! We hear you asking for proof so here is an archive photo… Enjoy !
Sanitary crisis and first successes 🏃
We all lived through it, the 2020 context was not all joy and laughter. The pandemic was all around us, and it definitely didn’t make launching a startup any easier. 😖
Despite these obstacles, Greenly managed to obtain major successes. Strengthened by the first feedback from our early-adopters, and galvanized by the enthusiasm of the press, we spent our days improving, refining and building on our ambitious promise, the promise of helping individuals track and reduce their personal emissions.
Not all tests were successful: the on-boarding and the built-in bank synchronization aspects had to be rewritten multiple times before the right version was found. Now, users can install the application with confidence.
Similarly, the accuracy of the carbon calculator took time to perfect. Our word of advice: hard work, perseverance... and good recruitment truly helped us build cutting-edge technology with the lowest possible barrier to entry.
PIVOT, PIVOT! PIVAAT 🎓
After only a few months, the launch of the app reached nearly 40,000 engaged and active users. With its sudden popularity, Greenly discovered new opportunities in the banking world, with banks showing a strong interest in implementing this technology for their business. This became a huge opportunity for Greenly to better disseminate information, reaching more people and raising awareness.
After the creation of our API, which is still regularly updated with new data, we signed our first partnerships! Today, nearly 20 banks from all over the world are implementing our technology to enable their clients to calculate their CO2 emissions!
In December 2020, Greenly received the Fintech of the Year award, then joined the French Tech Green 20. In partnership with the Ministry of Ecological Transition, this program allowed us to benefit from government support similar to that of the French Tech 120 start-ups.
The B2B Shift … Carbon Management for SMEs
Climate Change is also a business’s business…
Until now, carbon accounting in business was reserved for large groups, whose emissions are often the sum of their suppliers. The obligation for carbon monitoring trickles down to even the smallest businesses, but SMEs were often unable to hire carbon consultants as they were constrained by time and budgetary factors.
And hence our main pivot!
We saw the need for a software that could simplify this process, one which could be continually enriched with new data.
Today, Greenly's vision is that ALL companies, regardless of their size or sector, should be able to contribute to the fight against global warming. The first step is simply measuring their emissions.
The fusion of financial accounting and carbon accounting is taking place right before our eyes, and we are proud to contribute to this revolution!
Conquering the West 😎
🌏 Going global!
Where? The US
Why? In 2021, North America experienced the hottest June and July on record, with temperatures soaring 2.77°F (1.54°C) above average. With this in mind, and while holding onto the commitment to the fight against climate change, Greenly deployed CTO Matthieu Vegreville to the US to establish a new office in February 2022. With the support of an American fund leading in the energy transition, Greenly was able to accelerate its development in the United States, to help companies engage in their ecological transition and support them in defining their Net Zero trajectory. Today, Greenly is opening new positions in Paris and New York, emblematic cities threatened by global warming and rising ocean levels.
🚀 The European model entering the United States
2021 set a sad record for the highest amount of greenhouse gas emissions ever recorded. 💣 36.3 billion tonnes of CO2 were released into the atmosphere in that year alone.
In addition, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict raging at the doors of the European Union highlights our dependence on fossil resources more than ever before. 😰
At the same time, new regulations are increasing in Europe and in the United States, as seen with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Finally, the second part of the IPCC report (published on February 28, 2022) urges humanity to take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In short: climate change represents a real ethical and legal issue to our economy and businesses. But there’s also the financial side… 😶
In this context, Greenly’s mission is simple: help SMBs measure, report and reduce the carbon footprint of their operation and supply chain.
💵 $23M to accelerate our deployment and to improve coaching
We have decided to democratize carbon management for SMEs in France, Navarre, and now the US and UK as well. This has all been made possible by our fundraising efforts which give us the means to be more ambitious.
Both European and American investment funds are playing a part, such as XAnge and Energy Impact Partners (EIP), along with several newcomers including Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, founder of Criteo and the Galion Project, to name but a few. Our focus now is on the scale-up of our SaaS software and its development at a larger scale, to enable all economic players to measure their greenhouse gas emissions seamlessly and precisely.
The idea?
- Normalize carbon footprinting for all companies - large French companies have already been initiated by the Grenelle II law - in order to actively contribute to the fight against climate change
- Support any entity wishing to develop a low-carbon strategy.
- Raise awareness about carbon neutrality practices.
- Support our professional clients in the calculation and reduction of their carbon footprint, by offering them a tool for monitoring and managing their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
In other words: we aim to contribute to the fight against climate change, by sharing our expertise in carbon accounting & management with everyone. 👍
✌ What exactly is the carbon balance method?
More than 100 business software programs are now integrated in our interface which allows us to quantify most of the activities that generate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These integrations are used to evaluate greenhouse gas emissions under scopes 1, 2 and 3, and to generate carbon reports in accordance with international (GHG Protocol) or French standards. (Under the Environment and Energy Management Agency, known as ADEME).
To make things even better, Greenly’s tool is equipped with an intelligent recommendations engine that provides less carbon-intensive alternatives to the main emissions sources. For example, our customers can now reduce their digital carbon footprint by 70%.
But we can’t forget about the larger groups 😉
Our goal is to connect their supplier networks to their decarbonization efforts, where everyone benefits from a powerful economic solution to decarbonize their supply chain. Greenly’s technology automates data collection analysis through real-time accounting data integration of more than 100 software solutions!
Would you like to join us on our mission? Learn more about the carbon footprint? Our method? Our platform? Our application? Don’t be shy 😊 : contact our experts today!
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published the September 29, 2022
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