Plan A, a carbon accounting and ESG reporting platform for corporations, has raised €25 million in a Series A round of funding led by US VC giant Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Technically, the funding is an extension of a €9 million Series A round it announced nearly two years ago, meaning for all intents and purposes this is the closing of a €35 million Series A round, taking its total raised to €39 million across its six year history. But perhaps more notably, its latest round also includes participation from some major names from the corporate world.
Lubomila Jordanova, Plan A founder and CEO, explained, “the urgency of the climate crisis, combined with the complexity of navigating net-zero journeys for businesses, made it imperative for us to bring onboard top-tier investors now.”
Founded out of Berlin in 2017, Plan A (a reference to the ‘no plan B’ climate action mantra) is one of numerous VC-backed startups to emerge out of Europe with the express aim of helping companies measure (and cut) their carbon footprint. The perennial problem, it seems, is that even with the best will in the world, cutting carbon emissions can be difficult unless a company makes a real effort to discover exactly what their emissions are, and where they are in the supply chain.
Jordanova said, “as the climate crisis is defined in large part by the growth of emissions, one of the most urgent challenges, and the only economically viable choice, is to rapidly reduce the emissions curve, especially for companies.”
Thus, Plan A has developed a SaaS-based sustainability platform that enables companies to self-manage their net-zero efforts — this includes collecting data, calculating emissions, setting targets, and decarbonization planning. Crucially, it includes mapping emissions data across all scope 1, 2, and 3, and aligning them with global scientific standards and methodologies, including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).
While the core Plan A product is a web app, customers — which include BMW, Deutsche Bank, KFC, and Visa — can also plug directly into Plan A via API, which is useful for integrating business and emissions data from across myriad applications such as business travel software and business intelligence (BI) tools.
Plan A counts 120 employees across Berlin, Paris, and London, and with its fresh cash injection Jordanova said that it plans to double down on that with a slew of new hires.
Jordanova concluded, “the funding now heralds our next growth phase. With the fresh capital, we will double our headcount to expand our market penetration in Europe with a strong focus on France, the U.K., and Scandinavia, as well as deepen our platform capabilities.”
Source: TechCrunch