Carbon Tracking Platform "Vaayu" Raises $11.5 Million in Seed Round Led by Atomico

Vaayu, a carbon tracking platform for retailers situated in Berlin, has raised $11.5 million in a seed round led by Atomico. Vaayu will use the money to help retailers compare their carbon footprints to other businesses and give information about the carbon footprint of individual items.

Vaayu, a Berlin-based startup, has raised $11.5 million in a seed round led by Atomico. CapitalT has provided further investment, as well as involvement from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian's firm, Seven Seven Six. Atomico partner Terese Hougaard will join Vaayu's board of directors as part of this round of funding. The new round brings the total seed funding raised to $13 million.

Vaayu's platform interfaces with retailers' point-of-sale systems, claiming to quantify the carbon footprint of all daily transactions using the company's database of over 600,000 data points.

According to Vaayu, the investment will allow it to compare retailers' emissions with those of their competitors and give them detailed information about the carbon footprint of specific items.

Vaayu was launched by Luca Schmid, a software engineer and data scientist, and Namrata Sandhu, the previous head of sustainability at Zalando, during the pandemic. Wunderman Thompson Commerce, Berlin-based SellerX, Astrid & Miyu, and Missoma are among the company's 50 customers.

Namrata Sandhu, CEO and co-founder Vaayu, said in a statement: “We have just nine years to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and as one of the industries with the largest global carbon footprint, the retail sector is facing mounting pressure from all sides. If the sector continues to grow at its current rate, modest predictions suggest that emissions will surge by more than 50% by 2030.”