Carbon reporting startup Altruistiq has raised £15 million in seed financing.
The London company says it is aiming to change the standard on carbon reporting from a ‘carbon accounting and credits’ approach to a ‘carbon abatement’ model.
The funding will help the firm champion its abatement engine, which it says brings unparalleled accuracy in granular data reporting and business intelligent impact management. It is targeting large, often complex businesses in the retail, food, FMCG, logistics and fashion industries.
Venture capital firm Molten led the round, supported by Norrsken and angel investors, Greg Jackson, Mudassir Sheikha and Siraj Khaliq and Sir Ian Cheshire.
In a process that goes deeper than simply a commitment to carbon offsets through the identification of CO2 emissions and reduction initiatives throughout their customer’s value chain, Altruistiq says its solution is having a huge impact on the way its clients do business.
Using data generated by Altruistiq, UK recipe box provider, Gousto, is tackling decarbonisation on two fronts: suppliers’ farming methods and the mix of recipes and ingredients it sells.
The company has surfaced insights using Altruistiq that allow it to reduce the carbon impact of its current recipes down to the individual ingredient. For example, Gousto discovered that sourcing tomatoes from Seville had a lower carbon impact than sourcing from the UK.
“We’ve seen a big shift towards businesses embracing the ‘carbon accounting’ space,” said Saif Hameed, CEO & founder.
“Whilst this is a helpful tailwind, inaccurate data sets and a resulting lack of granular calculation, leads to generic emission factors that can leave organisations open to charges of greenwashing.
“We, at Altruistiq, are focused on giving businesses the data engineering tools to better understand their actual impact, whilst also enhancing their credibility on sustainability.”
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Alexander Danielsson, investment director at Norrsken VC, added: “We back entrepreneurs that are solving the world’s biggest challenges.
“Altruistiq provides a sustainability platform where corporates can, among other metrics, measure, and plan initiatives to abate emissions in a simple and effective way.
“Enabling corporates to abate their emissions is the biggest lever to take us to Net Zero. We are delighted to be partnering up with Saif and the Altruistiq team to solve our climate crisis.”