Australian carbon management startup Avarni has raised $3 million to streamline the future of carbon management.
The round is the second fundraising since founding and was led by deep tech venture firm Main Sequence, along with existing investors Vulpes Ventures and Common Sense Ventures, Avarni said in a statement.
“Since our launch roughly a year ago, we have made huge strides in Australia and globally to help companies continue to progress their decarbonization journey, and use our artificial intelligence (AI)-backed platform to allow businesses to access their Scope 3 emissions quickly, effectively and without the burden of significant cost,” said Avarni Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Tony Yammine.
“Climate risk is one of the biggest concerns for executives, boards and shareholders today, and that’s not going away anytime soon. Now, we’re entering a new exciting phase, which will see us remain laser focused on providing extensive data sets and insights to become the go-to carbon management platform for companies and their advisors,” he added.
Founded in 2021, the initial team members of Avarni met at a Sydney-based tech incubator where they saw a massive gap in the market on carbon reporting.
The founding team included Tony Yammine, who was previously a management consultant at KPMG Australia, Misha Cajic, Chief Product Officer and previously a product manager at Atlassian, and Anuj Paudel, Chief Technology Officer and previous cloud network engineer at Macquarie Telecom Group.
Backed by Australian innovation and leadership, this allowed Avarni to create one of the world’s most comprehensive datasets on emissions using artificial intelligence to forecast the impact of different decarbonization scenarios.
“Despite the vast numbers of commitments to emissions targets, as well as the growing number of countries mandating disclosures, enterprises are struggling to understand, let alone manage their Scope 3 emissions. Avarni’s traction with some of the world’s largest consultancies and their clients puts them in a great position to help us decarbonize the planet,” said Mike Zimmerman, Partner from Main Sequence, who will join the Avarni Board.
Since its inception, Avarni has grown quickly, analyzing more than $100 billion in corporate spending data and 150 million tonnes of CO2e in supply chains.
Avarni’s extensive data set has seen it secure deals with major consulting firms such as KPMG Australia, as well as other major global enterprises such as Point B and 5B focused on expanding their Scope 3 decarbonization solution sets.
Avarni is also a technology partner at the McKinsey Digital Capability Center, part of McKinsey & Company’s global Digital Capability Center Network.
“What Avarni has achieved over the last year has been phenomenal and they are on a strong trajectory despite a challenging economic environment,
“The team is rapidly building one of the biggest data sets available on corporate emissions. This is the intelligence businesses need to inform their decarbonization strategies – and Avarni is at the forefront of rapidly collecting this information,” said Field Pickering, Managing Partner at Vulpes Ventures.
It is noted that at COP27, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported emissions need to come down before 2025 in order to limit temperature rises to 1.5C.
Similarly, the Financial Stability Board created a Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (the TCFD), to fully commit to market transparency when it comes to decarbonisation.
Commitments to achieve net zero by large corporations is becoming a necessity with surmounting pressure from board members, government, external stakeholders and the public.
Pressure is also mounting on large and public companies to set scientific-based net-zero targets, and report on carbon emissions aligned with international standards set by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
While many companies are starting to report these emissions, there remains a major gap in understanding and sourcing data for scope 3 emissions — those emitted by an organization’s suppliers or in the supply chain.
To assist with the decarbonization process, Avarni set out to help the world’s largest consultancies and enterprise companies, aggregate supply-chain and spending data to help them understand, report and forecast their carbon footprint across scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
Avarni’s platform dramatically speeds up the process of assessing, planning and monitoring carbon emissions across an organization and its supply chain, while allowing them to also forecast different decarbonization scenarios.