New Delhi, May 16, 2023. StepChange, a top-tier corporate sustainability platform has secured over $4 million in seed funding led by BEENEXT and Global Founders Capital. The investment also saw participation from a group of global investors including Genesia Ventures, Whiteboard Capital, Saison Capital, Seedstars, Antler, and Speciale Invest.
StepChange has one of the largest India-specific carbon accounting databases, with over 75,000 emission factors for various products and services, and has enabled leading enterprises to account for over 250 million tCO2e in aggregate, equivalent to over 7.5% of India's emissions. The funds raised will be directed towards enhancing their region-specific carbon accounting models, driving product development, and accelerating growth in India and key international markets.
Sharing his thoughts on this development, Ankit Jain, Co-founder and CEO, StepChange said “We are grateful to our investors for their vote of confidence. StepChange was built to address a critical need in the market: businesses lacked a reliable and effective way to navigate the complex landscape of sustainability and NetZero Transition. We have over 10 dedicated climate researchers on our team to ensure that we are able to create the most reliable and cost-efficient solutions for businesses to become sustainable and achieve their sustainability goals. We are proud to be the sustainability partner of choice for some of the largest Indian enterprises and plan to take our offerings international very soon.”
Anirudh Garg, Investor, BEENEXT expressed his views on the potential of the platform, “StepChange's innovative approach to corporate sustainability focuses on region-specific carbon accounting models and platforms. We believe this approach will be a game-changer in the global effort towards tackling climate change. We look forward to supporting StepChange as they continue to empower individuals, organisations, and other entities to make data-driven decisions for a sustainable future.”
Leo Banchik and Roel Janssen, Partners, Global Founders Capital also shared their confidence in the platform: “As the world transitions towards net zero, decarbonising financial portfolios and corporate operations & supply chains is fast becoming the next big corporate challenge. StepChange is helping enterprises and financial institutions decarbonize by measuring and managing their carbon emissions using a differentiated, science-based approach. We are excited by the strength of the founding team and product traction in a region that is home to a large portion of global supply chain emissions which must be decarbonized. We are proud to back StepChange and look forward to partnering to create a category-defining company in the region and beyond.”
Representing one of StepChange’s leading clients, Manish Kumar, Head- ESG & CSR, ICICI Bank Limited “ICICI Bank has been working with StepChange to comprehensively measure the environmental impact of its business and its portfolio. Their platform has, in quick time, based on our existing data/information, opened up a host of opportunities to evaluate how to drive down emissions in our operations and our value chain. In addition to their platform, we also find the StepChange team to be great thought partners in our sustainability journey”.
Founded in 2022, StepChange offers a comprehensive integrated solution to large corporate enterprises and financial institutions to improve their ESG metrics, manage climate risk, and reduce emissions across their supply chains, in-house operations, and financial portfolios. The platform is working with some of the industry's most prominent players, including ICICI Bank, one of the country's largest private sector banks, ITC Limited, India's leading FMCG conglomerate, and SBI, India's largest public sector bank, across their value chains and portfolios.
