The money donated will go towards improving StepChange’s carbon accounting models for individual geographic areas, promoting product development, and boosting business in India and other important foreign markets.
StepChange, a platform for sustainability, has raised nearly $4 million in seed finance, with BEENEXT and Global Founders Capital as the main investors. A number of other international investors, including Genesia Ventures, Whiteboard Capital, Saison Capital, Seedstars, Antler, and Speciale Invest, also participated in the investment. The money raised, according to the official announcement, would be put to use improving StepChange’s carbon accounting models for each region, promoting product development, and boosting the company’s growth in India and other important international markets.
The firm, which now has a global staff of about 30 people, will also put an emphasis on hiring, according to Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of StepChange, in a conversation with YourStory. The US-based company, founded in 2022 by Ankit Jain and Dr. Sidhant Pai, provides large corporate enterprises and financial institutions with an all-encompassing integrated solution to enhance their ESG metrics, manage climate risk, and cut emissions throughout their supply chains, internal operations, and financial portfolios. StepChange offers internationally recognised science-based methodologies, user-friendly cloud-based tools that seamlessly integrate into existing enterprise systems, and other services to assist businesses in benchmarking their ESG metrics, identifying emissions hotspots, setting achievable targets, tracking improvements, reporting ESG performance, and complying with regulations as well as communicating the advantages of their sustainability initiatives to their customers.
“StepChange was developed to fill a need in the market: businesses lacked a trustworthy and efficient means to negotiate the challenging terrain of sustainability and NetZero Transition. More than 10 devoted climate researchers work on our team to make sure we can provide the most dependable and affordable solutions for businesses to become sustainable and reach their sustainability goals, according to Jain. “We are proud to be the sustainability partner of choice for some of the largest Indian enterprises, and we plan to take our offerings international very soon,” he continued. With more than 75,000 emission variables for diverse goods and services, StepChange has one of the largest India-specific carbon accounting databases. This has allowed top businesses to account for more than 250 million tCO2e, or more than 7.5% of India’s emissions.
Along their value chains and portfolios, the platform is collaborating with some of the most well-known firms in the sector, including ICICI Bank, ITC Limited, and SBI. “Region-specific carbon accounting models and platforms are the emphasis of StepChange’s creative approach to corporate sustainability. We think that this strategy will fundamentally alter how the world fights climate change.
Anirudh Garg, Investor, BEENEXT, said, “We look forward to supporting StepChange as they continue to enable people, organisations, and other organisations to make data-driven decisions for a sustainable future. “In addition to the platform, we also find the StepChange team to be great thought partners in our sustainability journey,” he continued. “Decarbonizing financial portfolios, corporate processes, and supply chains is quickly emerging as the next major corporate challenge as the globe moves towards net zero. Leo Banchik and Roel Janssen, partners at Global Founders Capital, explained how Stepchange is assisting businesses and financial institutions in their efforts to become carbon-neutral by measuring and managing their carbon emissions in accordance with a unique, scientific methodology.
