Root, a startup helping food and beverage companies get to net zero, announced they have raised an €8 million seed round, led by Christoph Janz at Point Nine, with participation from Project A, HelloWorld, Arc Investors, and a host of experienced startup operators.
The RootOS platform helps companies across the food system manage their climate footprint and reduce GHG emissions. The startup’s approach has been focused on tackling one food product category at a time, helping companies calculate and reduce their GHG emissions. This requires going all the way to the largest sources of emissions – often deep in their supply chain.
“Two years ago, we founded Root Global with one mission: help companies across the food system get to Net Zero,” said Eric Oancea and Maurice Hensl, co-Founders of Root. “Our mission is more urgent today than ever. Climate performance has become a critical business performance indicator as enterprises are now mandated to disclose their climate performance and set Net Zero targets. Some of the companies we now work with had even lost key customers due to missing climate requirements and documentation, prior to onboarding.”
Europe’s biggest F&B players on board
In the past 18 months, the team behind Root has been involved in finding product-market-fit. That is deeply trying to understand their customers and solving their most urgent pain point. Since launching the RootOS platform in October 2023, they have onboarded some of Europe’s biggest Food & Beverage players, including the largest dairy plant in Europe and the largest fast-food chain in the world. Through them, Root works with over 10k farmers in helping them manage and reduce millions of tons of CO2e.
So far, Root have been able to help companies assess their carbon footprint at unprecedented levels of accuracy, efficiency and scale. According to its founders, their aim is to demonstrate emission reduction year over year. Because they have access to the most critical data in the supply chain, Root’s founders believe they have a clear and practical solution that will become industry standard for a €400 billion market.
“Imagine you are a sustainability manager and can suddenly say with confidence: I know exactly what to do the next 12 months with my 1000 farmers to reduce my scope 3 emissions by 5%. I will need to initiate the following 4 measures on these farms, it will cost me this much, and I will need the following resources to be successful. I can tell you that the company’s leadership and customers will be thrilled to finally have that confidence and reliability from their sustainability team,” added co-Founder Eric Oancea.
Entering their next phase of growth, the German startup is looking for talent that are also excited to tackle the challenges of climate change and the food system.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/08/berlin-based-root-raises-e8-million-to-build-the-climate-os-of-the-food-industry/
