Vaayu, a carbon tracking platform for retailers, raises $11.5 million Atomico-led Seed Round – TechCrunch
The last few years have seen an explosion of carbon-computing startups, and it is likely to dominate in the long run. (We need all the help we can to avoid the catastrophe of global warming and climate change.) Included among those startups are the likes of https://plana.earth/ or https://www.planetly.org/ But many of these new companies, as welcomed as they are, have tend to be more general in their approach. The new wave of companies in this space will likely dive into specific industries. But of course, each of these industries will likely be quite extensive verticals.
Signs of that are emerging with the emergence of startups like Vaayu offers – what it claims – is real-time monitoring of retail sales at a granular, transaction-specific level, designed to help retailers reduce their carbon footprint. According to the report, the retail sector’s carbon footprint is responsible for 20% of total global emissions – more than international flights and the maritime industry combined. So minimizing it is very important. we mention Its first funding round was last year.
Berlin-based Vaayu has now closed a $11.5 million seed funding round led by Atomico. This includes further funding from CapitalT and participation from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Six. As part of this investment round, Atomico Partner Terese Hougaard will join Vaayu’s board of directors (which will now include 75% female participants). The round has a total seed fund raised so far of $13 million.
Vaayu’s platform connects to store platforms through their point of sale system and claims to calculate the carbon footprint of all daily transactions using a database of more than 600,000 data points. company data.
The investment will allow Vaayu to benchmark retailers’ emissions against peers and detail each item’s carbon footprint, it said.
Vaayu was founded during the pandemic by the previous head of sustainability at Zalando, Namrata Sandhu, and software engineer and data scientist, Luca Schmid. It now has 50 customers, including Wunderman Thompson Commerce and SellerX, Berlin-based Astrid & Miyu and Missoma.
Namrata Sandhu, CEO and co-founder, Vaayu, said in a statement: “We have only nine years to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and are one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. As the largest carbon emitter globally, the retail sector is facing increasing pressure from all sides. If the sector continues to grow at its current rate, modest projections suggest emissions will increase by more than 50% by 2030.”
“At Atomico, we want to partner with today’s boldest founders to tackle the biggest challenges of tomorrow. Nam and Luca’s vision for Vaayu, to build a platform that allows retailers to view and reduce their carbon footprint in real time, combined with their deep retail expertise, perfect fit for us,” added Atomico partner Terese Hougaard.
Participating in the round were investors including Cristina Stenbeck, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors Zalando and Non-Executive Director of Spotify, and Bryant Chou, Co-Founder and CTO of Webflow.
