We Raised €8M to Help Food & Beverage Companies Get to Net Zero
Hey, this is Mo and Eric - the founders of Root Global. Two years ago, we founded Root Global with one mission: help companies across the food system get to Net Zero. Today, we are happy to announce that we have raised an €8M seed round, led by Christoph Janz at Point Nine, with participation from Project A, HelloWorld, Arc Investors, and a host of experienced startup operators.
Our RootOS platform helps companies across the food system manage their climate footprint and reduce GHG emissions. Entering our next phase of growth, we are looking for more Rooties to join our cause! If you are excited to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of our time, are passionate about our food system, and share our drive, we would love to speak to you!
Finding Product-Market-Fit
In the past 18 months, we have been obsessed with deeply understanding our customers and solving their most urgent pain point. Since launching our RootOS platform in October 2023, we have onboarded some of Europe's biggest Food & Beverage players, including the largest dairy plant in Europe and the largest fast-food chain in the world. Through them, we work with over 10k farmers in helping them manage and reduce millions of tons of CO2e. What makes us particularly proud is that the majority of our customers discovered and started working with us thanks to strong word of mouth and industry references.
Since day one our approach has been focused on tackling one food product category at a time. Helping companies calculate and reduce their GHG emissions requires going all the way to the largest sources of emissions - often deep in their supply chain. This is due to the nature of how carbon accounting works: A company’s emission footprint includes emissions of all its suppliers. For example, out of Nestlé’s 113 million tons of CO2e, which approximately equals all of Belgium’s GHG emissions, over 107 million are emitted across their supply chain.
Next 18 Months: Growing Our Data Coverage
Our mission is more urgent today than ever. Climate performance has become a critical business performance indicator as enterprises are now mandated to disclose their climate performance and set Net Zero targets. Some of the companies we now work with had even lost key customers due to missing climate requirements and documentation, prior to onboarding.
So far, we were able to help companies assess their carbon footprint at unprecedented levels of accuracy, efficiency and scale. We have now gradually developed to further supporting companies derive and initiate tangible reduction measures. Our aim is to demonstrate emission reduction year over year. Given we have access to the most critical data in the supply chain, we believe we have a clear and practical solution that will become industry standard for a €400bn market.
Building a Team for Success
The key to making this ambition a reality is growing an exceptional team. We see company building to be as important as building our customer-facing product. We see ourselves as product managers and builders of Root Global - the company.
One way we ensure we set up our team for success is by carefully picking our investors and advisors. Next to software gurus such as Christoph and Rodrigo, we have continued to bring on experienced startup operators on board for this round as well to give our early stage colleagues the chance of getting mentored by the best in the industry. Many of us have regular checkins with our angel investors and advisors or just give them an adhoc call late in the evening to talk about a challenging situation at hand - be it about B2B sales, marketing, product or engineering. You can read more about our approach here.
We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last one that can do something about it. We hope you will join us. Drop us a direct message or apply directly to one of our open roles - we would love to speak!
Mo & Eric