Paris-based Greenly raises €21.27M to help companies with carbon management; here’s how

Paris-based Greenly, a tech startup specialised in helping organisations lower their carbon emissions, announced on Thursday that it has raised $23M (approximately €21.27M) in its Series A round of funding. The round was co-led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP) and by Germany and France-based investment funds Xange to scale carbon accounting and management across the US and Europe.

Prior to this, Greenly has raised $3M in September 2021, and initial funding of $600K, in 2020.

About the investors

Energy Impact Partners, LP (EIP) is a global investment platform leading the transition to a sustainable energy future. The company brings together entrepreneurs and forward-thinking energy and industrial companies to push innovation. With over $2B in assets under management, EIP invests globally across venture, growth, credit, and infrastructure.

Matthias Dill, Managing Partner at EIP, says, “EIP’s mission is to back the best entrepreneurs building the tools to decarbonise industries as quickly as possible. Through our deep roots in the energy sector, we know that many corporate leaders are looking for practical tools to manage and reduce their carbon emissions. Greenly has hit the nerve and managed to scale its customer base rapidly. We are proud to support the team on their global expansion.”

XAnge, which co-led this round, is an early-stage investment fund with €600M under its management, and is based out of Paris and Munich. Its investment team supports European entrepreneurs who aim to change everyday life through technology, by investing amounts from €300K to €10M at the Seed stage. The firm invests in deeptech, healthcare, fintech, Saas and e-commerce sectors.

Besides, the round also saw participation from new investors including Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, founder of Criteo, and the Galion Project.

Capital utilisation

Greenly claims that the funds will allow the company to continue its global roll-out with a focus on the US and Europe. In mid-March, Greenly opened new offices in New York to kick-start its operations in the US and now plans to triple its workforce.

The company says it will expand its technical teams, and recruit carbon footprint experts and sales representatives. Therefore, the startup will open 100 positions across Paris and the US.

Helping companies reduce their carbon footprint

The US Green Deal and the new “EU taxonomy for sustainable activities” are putting pressure on businesses to manage their carbon emissions. To massify carbon management, Greenly says it is disrupting the consultancy-led process of collecting and analysing data manually, by deploying simple and intuitive software.

Alexis Normand, CEO and co-founder, says, “Greenly’s vision is that all companies should play a role in fighting 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 software that merges financial and carbon accounting. We are proud to contribute to this revolution.”

Greenly’s mission is simple: to accelerate the development of the technology to enable each player – whether companies, banks, or private individuals – to better monitor and control their CO2 emissions.

The company’s platform automates carbon accounting in full compliance with international reporting standards (CDP, GHG, and TCFD). With already more than 400 corporate customers, the platform wants to target SMEs rather than large enterprises as a way to disrupt the industry. Currently, the platform is already used by more than a hundred scale-ups and unicorns in France, including Payfit, Swile, Konbini, Foodles, LeoCare, Foodchéri, Outsight, Alma etc.

Greenly was founded in 2019 by Alexis Normand, ex-head of B2B at Withings and Nokia Digital Health, HEC, Sciences-Po, Techstars Alumni; Matthieu Vegreville, CTO, X-Telecom, former data scientist at Withings & Embleema; and, Arnaud Delubac, UX/UI, ESSEC-Centrale, INSEEC, formerly part of the French Prime Minister’s digital communication team.

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. The company has developed AI-powered analytics and recommendation engine to suggest practical ways to reduce one’s emissions, for example suggesting less carbon-intensive alternatives to suppliers.

Democratising carbon footprinting among SMEs through AI

According to Alexis Normand, “Today, only about 20 per cent of global carbon emissions are tracked and managed. To effectively tackle climate change, we must disrupt a market still dominated by low tech consultancies addressing enterprises with one-shot assignments worth between $20K and $100K. Competitors like Watershed or Persefoni are trying to digitise this process and it’s probably a good idea. But this still leaves out small businesses which actually make up the larger share of emissions.”

“At Greenly, we think this market must be radically disrupted by offering simple to use, affordable software for any business type, making carbon accounting and management as pervasive as financial management. This is the only way to put businesses on a path to Net Zero and limit global warming,” adds Normand.

Integration Greenly with more than 100 business applications makes it possible to automatically quantify a majority of emissions-generating activities, minimise manual data entries and to fast-track measurement. 

Typically, accounting data, energy or data centres consumption (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, etc.), as well as e-commerce activity (Shopify, etc.), can be imported directly into the platform.  These integrations make it possible to monitor emission generating activities in real-time. With an extensive library of more than one hundred thousand emission factors, Greenly converts these activities into emission metrics and generates a carbon disclosure report compliant with international standards (Greenhouse Gas Protocol).

Besides, the company also offers e-learning and engagement modules to mobilise company employees and allows them to take ownership of the topic with full autonomy.