Sustainability and CO2 tracking — the start of a start-up vertical

3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 305

News 1: Soon a de-facto standard called EcoVadis

EcoVadis leads the way as far as finacing is concerned with a $735 million invest. Founded in Paris in 2007, it is not a “start-up” any longer, but gained the unicorn status in June with new financing (half-a-billion $, a mile stone). It is a platform where buyers as well as supplier can get a sustainabilty score. It is the recipe of EcoVadis, a universal score card in 160 countries. Many multinationals use this tool. Opinion: EcoVadis is growing into a champion. Recently acquired a young Berlin-based similar platform called Ecotrek that is above all based on data and data mining. More corporates are moving into the supply-chain sustaiability scoring, a societal trend and regulations (Germany and in the pipeline EU directives).

EcoVadis might establish as the one platform, the winner.

News 2: Carbon-focused Plan A

Berlin based Plan A is positioned in “carbon footprint” measuring, decarbonisation. It has extended to measuring all ESG levels. It is a classical SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) with three subscriptions. Essential (footprint measuring), Pro (adding ESG reporting) and Entreprise (for large corporations). Plan A gathered $15m financing. Opinion: This is in line with many firms committing to decarbonisation. And it means measuring and tracking the progres, this is where Plan A is positioned. Nice fact: they have a “Carbon Accounting” expert team. It is not easy to measure the footprint without putting average figures.

Plan A, a very good positioning, but traction not yet there (and still so necessary).

News 3: An ambition to measure foot-print on a product level. Yook

This is the ambition of Hamburg based Yook — measure in detail footprint at a product level — because it is there where “70%-80% of companies footprint take place (source: Yook). Yook started as a compensation widget at check-out of online shops and is now moving to a more sophisticated calculation, product by product, embracing all aspects (supply, manufacturing, transport, etc.) Opinion: Yook is opinion-leading in the subject of carbon footprint measuring. They are our neighbours at betahaus Hamburg and made us understand more. Footprint in companies is high in production of products, not in office matters like printing papers. They are tackling a great task — go into the details.

Good luck Yook for the pivoting and the ambition.