Plan A, One of Europe’s leading corporate carbon accounting, decarbonization, and ESG reporting software, has successfully secured over €25.2 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and key participants like Visa who previously signed an exclusive global partnership in December 2022.
Other notable investors included Deutsche Bank, Opera Tech Ventures (the venture capital division of BNP Paribas), and a host of unicorn founders such as those from Supercell, Aiven, Zalando, and Wolt. Current investors like HV Capital, Keen Venture Partners, Demeter IM, and Coparion also contributed to the round. The investment was secured on the strength of Plan A’s impressive customer growth, with over 1,500 clients, and skyrocketing software revenues, which grew more than 600% year-over-year from December 2021 to 2022. The company also boasts a robust pan-European partnership network and industry-leading technology in climate data processing and business decarbonization.
The funding marks the beginning of their next growth phase. With this fresh capital, Plan A will double its headcount to 240+ employees to expand its market penetration in Europe with a strong focus on France, the UK, and Scandinavia, as well as deepen its platform capabilities. For the latter, the aim is to further advance its platform’s decarbonisation tooling, Scope 3 coverage and actionability, as well as policy alignment capabilities. With this, Plan A will further its mission to empower hundreds of thousands of businesses to self-manage their net-zero journey by using its end-to-end SaaS platform.
Plan A Sustainability Platform: science-based SaaS covers the entire decarbonisation journey by automatically mapping all necessary data across Scopes 1, 2, and 3 and merging them with national emission factors and datasets, the Plan A Sustainability Platform is able to provide granular emissions profiles and ESG insights in dynamic dashboard overviews. Based on the indicators with the most significant reduction potential, the software empowers companies to set science-based net-zero targets and achieve them through 1,000+ decarbonisation solutions and activities, best practices, as well as a network of service providers and sustainability professionals. At the end of this holistic process, the platform produces regulation-proof ESG reporting. Due to the high degree of automation, deep decarbonisation and compliance in a highly fragmented regulatory market becomes manageable, less complex, and cost-efficient.
To meet the highest scientific standards, all platform-embedded calculations and decarbonisation solutions are fully aligned with internationally recognised scientific methodologies and standards such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). The scientific accuracy of the applied Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) calculation methodology is certified by TÜV Rheinland, one of the world’s leading verification bodies.
Lubomila Jordanova, CEO of Plan A, stated: “Climate change and the associated impacts pose an existential risk to businesses. It’s our mission at Plan A to provide made-to-measure software solutions and services to empower large and complex companies to decarbonise their operations and value chains and respond to regulatory shifts. We are over the moon to bring these stellar investors on board the Plan A journey today to back us in navigating the complexity of corporate decarbonisation and address climate change on a global scale.”
Julie Kainz, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, commented: “At Lightspeed, we strongly believe in the power of technology and unique founding teams to attack one of the most important challenges our society faces today – climate change. We’ve been closely following the journey of Lubomila and the entire Plan A team over the past years and it has become incredibly clear to us that they have positioned themselves as a leader in this space. The strength and flexibility of their platform truly has the capabilities to drive change and impact within organisations from across any sector and on a global scale, and to guide organisations both small and large on a holistic decarbonisation journey.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2023/09/berlin-based-plan-a-raises-over-e25-2-million-to-scale-its-business-decarbonisation-platform/
