Accacia, an India-based decarbonization platform focusing on the real estate and infrastructure sectors, has closed a $6.5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Illuminate Financial, a venture capital firm focused on enterprise fintech companies.

Accacia said in a statement on Monday that Southeast Asia based AC Ventures also participated in this round, alongside continued support from early backers Accel and B Capital.

“This funding comes at a crucial juncture as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Singapore Exchange (SGX) have announced regulations on carbon emissions’ reporting,
underscoring the urgent need for comprehensive and real-time climate risk data,

“We have already deployed our solution to over 25m squarter feet of real estate and are poised to leverage this opportunity and scale globally,” said Annu Talreja, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Accacia.

According to the statement, real estate and construction activity contribute to about 40 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the sector lacks robust tools to measure climate risks and define decarbonization pathways.

Founded in 2022 by INSEAD alumni Annu Talreja and Co-founders Piyush Chitkara and Jagmohan Garg, Accacia offers an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled software as a service (SAAS) platform that helps real estate asset managers, owners and developers track their emissions, and design their decarbonization journey.

The platform allows customers to measure and benchmark the transitional risks on their portfolios, while the AI-enabled recommendation engine suggests decarbonization strategies at the asset and portfolio level.

Illuminate Financial, with its extensive network of financial services’ industry limited partners, has a unique perspective of this evolution where climate risk is becoming a must-have metric for investors.

“Measuring and managing climate risks has become imperative for large financial institutions especially on real estate which is one of the most significant and most affected asset classes in their portfolio,

“With Annu’s background and industry experience in real estate, we felt Accacia is the right fit to take on a leading position in the global real estate decarbonization market and are pleased to partner with the Accacia team,” said Rezso Szabo, Partner at Illuminate Financial.

Helen Wong, Managing Partner at AC Ventures, said that while real estate is one of the single largest contributors to GHG emissions, it is also a very hard-to-decarbonize sector given the complexity of value chain emissions (construction vs operations) and the variety of asset uses.

“Given our deep interest in climate, we were confident that the sector demanded a custom solution designed for nuances of the real estate sector and loved what Accacia has built,” she added.

According to the statement, decarbonization of real estate is one the biggest opportunities today – a staggering $18 trillion of investment is required over the next decade to get the real estate industry to net zero.

Accacia’s tech platform integrates with existing property management, energy management and procurement systems to automate real-time data capturing and tracking, making it the quickest and most affordable solution for real estate companies on their path to net zero.

It is noted that the real estate industry has recently become the focus for climate solutions with several large venture capital funds raising dedicated capital to decarbonize buildings.

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