People pay for music, so why not pay carbon offsets to alleviate their guilt about the climate crisis. Ecologi, a UK-based company, uses the money to plant 1 million trees every ten days in Africa and Latin America, as well as protect peatlands in Indonesia, as part of its mission. By purchasing carbon offsets that are linked to your spending habits, you can reduce your carbon footprint. Ecologi raised $5.75 million (£4.05 million) in seed funding in April from General Catalyst and Entrée Capital, for a pre-money valuation of £16.5 million.
The subscription service, which has 35,000 subscribers, allows customers to “grow their own forest” with at least 12 trees each month and offset their carbon footprint by sponsoring a variety of carbon-reducing programs. The firm, which started in 2019 and has bootstrapped until now, keeps all receipts, certifications, board minutes, and financial statements on their public ledger.
After exceeding its £2 million crowdfunding aim on the UK’s Crowdcube platform, it now has a pre-money worth of £75 million. The funds will used to create new products, increase the company’s personnel, and expand into the United States and Europe. It’s also waiting to get certified as a B-Corp. Ecologi Zero, the company’s real-time carbon footprinting platform for enterprises, will be released in early 2022. Other carbon footprinting SaaS firms such as Normative, Spherics, Plan A, and others would compete with this.
Ecologi claims to have boosted its effect through carbon savings by 330 percent in the previous year and has expanded by more than 650 percent in nine months. Turnover was £3.0 million ARR (annual recurring revenue) in January 2021, however the firm expects to conclude the year with £8.5 million ARR.
The firm claims to have planted more than 25 million trees and offset 1.2 million tonnes of CO2. Madagascar, Mozambique, Nicaragua, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Kenya planted the majority of these trees.
Protecting peatlands in Indonesia and creating energy from landfill gas in Turkey and discarded rice husks in India were among the projects the business-sponsored during the quarter.
“Community ownership is at the core of what we do and has been the driving force behind our development over the last two years, so we felt it was only appropriate that we give our loyal members the option to own a piece in Ecologi,” said Elliot Coad, CEO, and co-founder. We’ve spent the previous three months, since GC’s investment in April, rejecting down VC money in favor of a community-based crowdfund.”
