Singapore-based climate tech startup Zuno Carbon has secured $2.5 million in seed funding, led by Wavemaker Partners, a venture capital firm investing in enterprise, deep tech, and sustainability startups in Southeast Asia.

Other investors participating in the seed funding include SEEDS Capital and Blue InCube Ventures, Zuno Carbon said in a statement on Tuesday.

This follows Zuno Carbon’s pre-seed round in June last year, bringing the total funds raised in the past 12 months to over $3 million as the firm widens its presence globally.

According to the statement, the collective funding of over $3 million will be used to ramp up Zuno Carbon’s sales and marketing efforts, launch new features to further simplify compliance, and catalyze decarbonization with real, tangible actions.

Zuno Carbon opined that the strong support from venture capital firms is an endorsement of the firm’s differentiated approach and technology.

It said the company’s latest environment, social, and governance (ESG) management platform, Veridis, provides granular and auditable tracking of greenhouse gas emissions and reporting.

It said the level of data granularity and comprehensive emission sources database allow for higher quality decarbonization insights compared to other solutions.

It is noted that Veridis helps companies capture operational data to monitor direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scopes 1, 2, and 31).

Its application extends beyond reporting and accounting associated with carbon tracking solutions.

Offering an added layer of granularity and reliability, the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform analyses the data collected, generates sustainability reports based on global regulatory frameworks, and provides actionable recommendations.

“When it comes to climate-related disclosures, an industry survey showed that 35 percent of executives said that data quality is a key challenge, and 86 percent saying that monitoring Scope 3 (indirect emissions) remains an obstacle for them,” said Hari Nair, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Zuno Carbon.

“We hope to address this gap by reconceptualizing the decarbonization process,

“Veridis generates the equivalent of blood test results to evaluate a company’s sustainability and identifies the material areas to tackle,” he said.

According to the statement, Veridis has been deployed in hard-to-abate sectors, including oil and gas, logistics, and real estate.

The oil and gas industry alone is responsible for more than 40 percent of global emissions, according to a McKinsey report.

Nair said Veridis has enabled companies in Singapore, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia to reduce their carbon emissions through data-driven decisions.

“We have helped our customers zero in on material areas, with granular insights that extend beyond numbers, reducing emissions more effectively,

“We hope to partner with many other companies to explore greener processes in their businesses and accelerate the race towards net zero,” he added.

Founded in 2020, Zuno Carbon is a climate tech startup that provides decarbonization solutions for organizations of all sizes to take bold steps towards reducing their environmental impact.

The firm’s solution, Veridis helps companies to track their direct and indirect carbon emissions, identify hot spots and make data-driven carbon reduction decisions across their entire supply chain.

Its innovative approach to ESG management offers an added layer of granularity to accelerate the race towards net zero; differentiating Zuno Carbon from other available platforms.

“Decarbonization is an urgent global concern, yet organizations of all sizes continue to face difficulties in managing emissions from supply chains and multiple assets, often settling for suboptimal solutions available in the market,” said Andy Hwang, General Partner at Wavemaker Partners.

“With real-time emissions monitoring, comprehensive reports, and actionable recommendations, Zuno Carbon tackles the challenges of measuring even the most complex emissions,

“We believe that Zuno Carbon’s unique approach will establish a new standard for emissions tracking and reduction. We’re excited to join them on this journey of empowering heavy emitters to effectively decarbonize their operations,” he added.

Singapore’s TablePointer raises $3M from Wavemaker Partners, AgFunder, and ENGIE in seed funding