18 October, 2024
Energy tech startup Greenely grabs €8M to reach more households and support Europe's energy transition
The energy transition is a marathon, not a sprint. But opportunities for acceleration are growing. Swedish startup Greenely* has just spotted one. It’s closing an €8 million Series A funding round to expand its energy management platform into neighbouring Nordic countries (so around $8.7M at current exchange rates).
The energy tech startup is serving around 200,000 households in its home market. It offers freemium energy consumption analytics combined with energy optimization services that allow paying customers to achieve savings on their electricity consumption. Examples include smarter charging of electric vehicles when the energy price is low or accessing government payouts as a result of Greenely being able to reduce energy demand on the grid through automated (aggregated) optimization of customers’ energy demand.
Currently, these energy optimization services are only available to customers who pay Greenely for energy supply. But it plans to decouple that requirement as new European legislation is implemented in its home market — hopefully by the end of this year.
The startup also offers its energy customers the ability to install a home battery (it currently resells the Pixii Home) so they can store energy for later use. This enables households to respond to changes in wholesale electricity prices and optimize when they are/aren’t tapping the grid to reduce their energy costs.
Greenely’s platform is also designed to integrate and manage energy use and demand for households with solar installations and heat pumps. So, for instance, customers with home batteries and solar panels installed are able to sell surplus energy when the electricity price is high and store it when it’s low (for later use or future sale).
Paying customers get a dynamic, hourly priced electricity tariff and the ability to tap what Greenely dubs its “residential virtual power plant” (VPP) technology. This is the system that lets customers participate in balancing the electricity network and, by contributing to grid stability, unlock revenue generation opportunities via government payouts.
“We make sure that [our customers] save a lot of money,” says CEO and co-founder Tanmoy Bari (pictured atop a solar roof in the feature image above) in a call with TechCrunch. “Basically by switching and using our platform. And the virtual power plant technology actually enables consumers to generate revenue that they had never seen before.”
“We aggregate this on a massive scale so we can go into these frequency markets and basically stabilize the power grid in the nation. And this leads to the government actually reimbursing us, and we give this to the consumers as well. So consumers can save a lot of money, but also generate a lot of money via our platform today.”
Average energy consumption savings are €250 per customer per year, per Bari. Though he emphasizes that’s an average — saying a household that’s charging an EV could see savings of up to €500 per year through the platform’s ability to optimize charging.
For battery storage customers, there’s also the chance to earn revenue by supporting Greenely’s ability to help the government balance demand on the grid. Had its VPP tech been fully live across 2023 Bari suggests users would have been able to generate more than €3,000 in balancing payments last year. Customers do need to factor in the cost of the battery, though — but he says a household would recoup the home battery investment in “two to three years.”
Building an energy platform
Greenely wasn’t always running this smarter consumption race. It was founded about a decade ago — initially the idea was to offer a tool for energy utilities to enhance their customer experience. But a few years in, the team saw an opportunity to build “the consumer experience for the energy consumer for tomorrow,” as Bari puts — which demanded Greenely become an energy supplier.
As it stands the startup’s approach has some overlap with the likes of the UK’s Octopus Energy or — on its home turf — digital energy startup Tibber. But Greenely’s goal is to go beyond directly competing as an energy supplier. It wants to become an “energy platform” layer that customers of rival suppliers can also use to generate savings and earn revenue on top of their service provision.
Decoupling the service in that way may offer the chance for Greenely to position itself as a more independent player working on behalf of customers to drive down their energy bills and help them generate revenue — as an electricity supplier, it might profit more when customer bills are higher.
It also creates a pathway for the startup to build greater scale, have a bigger impact on energy management and demand, and potentially helping accelerate Europe’s decarbonization by unlocking ways to incentivize householders to play their part.
“We don’t see ourselves as an energy supplier,” Bari emphasizes. “We see ourselves as an energy platform.”
“We are trying to create the absolute best consumer experience for the consumers . . . And we’ve come a quite far way. We think that we have the most advanced offer today in the market, and that’s something that we’ve now trying to roll out across other markets as well.”
“We haven’t seen anybody else doing it,” he adds of the VPP play. “We have been preparing our service for this for quite a long time. Because we think that energy supply… it’s a great revenue model for us today but we think there’s so many other things that we can do. We do want to basically cover as many consumers as possible and create like the largest virtual power plant in Europe, and that requires a lot of consumers on a platform. So we don’t want to limit ourselves to only having customers that have our energy supply.”
Per Bari, the new funding will allow Greenely to scale its platform to homeowners in Finland and Norway as a first step for international expansion — tapping into a harmonized market for frequency balancing services across these countries.
It also has its eye on other European markets where there’s been good uptake of smart meters (he mentions France and the UK as interesting future possibilities). While Bari asserts the startup can adapt to regulatory differences in how energy markets are managed around Europe, he says smart meter penetration is essentially a prerequisite for its approach to work — so a market like Germany, where smart meter uptake is low, isn’t on its roadmap for now.
“The ambition is to create the largest residential virtual power plant and the consumer offer across Europe,” he also tells us. “This is a logical step, because everybody needs electricity, essentially. So the market is, like every market, quite huge when you can access a lot of consumers. And we’re still adding a lot of customers in Sweden till this day, since there’s more than 2 million detached homes and over 4 million homes.”
“So the markets are really, really big in Nordics — but the ambition is to become the largest player in Europe.”
Greenely’s Series A was led by Belgian investment company Korys, with existing investor Luminar Ventures and other current shareholders also participating. It has raised around €15M to date, including this latest round and a €2.5M seed round back in 2019.
Commenting on the Series A funding in a joint statement, Korys’ Brieuc de Hults, investment director, and Quentin Dupont, investment manager, wrote: “Greenely is a remarkable company, willing to revolutionize the way households consume electricity and positively contribute to a net-zero future, exemplifying the type of impactful company we want to support. We are thrilled to partner with Tanmoy and the team in this next exciting chapter for Greenely and to support their geographic and product expansion.”
*Not to be confused with French carbon-emission tracking startup, Greenly.
This report was updated with a correction to the upper bound figure for average savings for EV owners after we were given an incorrect figure during our interview
Energy tech startup Greenely grabs €8M to reach more households and support Europe's energy transition
The energy transition is a marathon, not a sprint. But opportunities for acceleration are growing. Swedish startup Greenely* has just spotted one. It’s closing an €8 million Series A funding round to expand its energy management platform into neighbouring Nordic countries (so around $8.7M at current exchange rates).
The energy tech startup is serving around 200,000 households in its home market. It offers freemium energy consumption analytics combined with energy optimization services that allow paying customers to achieve savings on their electricity consumption. Examples include smarter charging of electric vehicles when the energy price is low or accessing government payouts as a result of Greenely being able to reduce energy demand on the grid through automated (aggregated) optimization of customers’ energy demand.
Currently, these energy optimization services are only available to customers who pay Greenely for energy supply. But it plans to decouple that requirement as new European legislation is implemented in its home market — hopefully by the end of this year.
The startup also offers its energy customers the ability to install a home battery (it currently resells the Pixii Home) so they can store energy for later use. This enables households to respond to changes in wholesale electricity prices and optimize when they are/aren’t tapping the grid to reduce their energy costs.
Greenely’s platform is also designed to integrate and manage energy use and demand for households with solar installations and heat pumps. So, for instance, customers with home batteries and solar panels installed are able to sell surplus energy when the electricity price is high and store it when it’s low (for later use or future sale).
Paying customers get a dynamic, hourly priced electricity tariff and the ability to tap what Greenely dubs its “residential virtual power plant” (VPP) technology. This is the system that lets customers participate in balancing the electricity network and, by contributing to grid stability, unlock revenue generation opportunities via government payouts.
“We make sure that [our customers] save a lot of money,” says CEO and co-founder Tanmoy Bari (pictured atop a solar roof in the feature image above) in a call with TechCrunch. “Basically by switching and using our platform. And the virtual power plant technology actually enables consumers to generate revenue that they had never seen before.”
“We aggregate this on a massive scale so we can go into these frequency markets and basically stabilize the power grid in the nation. And this leads to the government actually reimbursing us, and we give this to the consumers as well. So consumers can save a lot of money, but also generate a lot of money via our platform today.”
Average energy consumption savings are €250 per customer per year, per Bari. Though he emphasizes that’s an average — saying a household that’s charging an EV could see savings of up to €500 per year through the platform’s ability to optimize charging.
For battery storage customers, there’s also the chance to earn revenue by supporting Greenely’s ability to help the government balance demand on the grid. Had its VPP tech been fully live across 2023 Bari suggests users would have been able to generate more than €3,000 in balancing payments last year. Customers do need to factor in the cost of the battery, though — but he says a household would recoup the home battery investment in “two to three years.”
Building an energy platform
Greenely wasn’t always running this smarter consumption race. It was founded about a decade ago — initially the idea was to offer a tool for energy utilities to enhance their customer experience. But a few years in, the team saw an opportunity to build “the consumer experience for the energy consumer for tomorrow,” as Bari puts — which demanded Greenely become an energy supplier.
As it stands the startup’s approach has some overlap with the likes of the UK’s Octopus Energy or — on its home turf — digital energy startup Tibber. But Greenely’s goal is to go beyond directly competing as an energy supplier. It wants to become an “energy platform” layer that customers of rival suppliers can also use to generate savings and earn revenue on top of their service provision.
Decoupling the service in that way may offer the chance for Greenely to position itself as a more independent player working on behalf of customers to drive down their energy bills and help them generate revenue — as an electricity supplier, it might profit more when customer bills are higher.
It also creates a pathway for the startup to build greater scale, have a bigger impact on energy management and demand, and potentially helping accelerate Europe’s decarbonization by unlocking ways to incentivize householders to play their part.
“We don’t see ourselves as an energy supplier,” Bari emphasizes. “We see ourselves as an energy platform.”
“We are trying to create the absolute best consumer experience for the consumers . . . And we’ve come a quite far way. We think that we have the most advanced offer today in the market, and that’s something that we’ve now trying to roll out across other markets as well.”
“We haven’t seen anybody else doing it,” he adds of the VPP play. “We have been preparing our service for this for quite a long time. Because we think that energy supply… it’s a great revenue model for us today but we think there’s so many other things that we can do. We do want to basically cover as many consumers as possible and create like the largest virtual power plant in Europe, and that requires a lot of consumers on a platform. So we don’t want to limit ourselves to only having customers that have our energy supply.”
Per Bari, the new funding will allow Greenely to scale its platform to homeowners in Finland and Norway as a first step for international expansion — tapping into a harmonized market for frequency balancing services across these countries.
It also has its eye on other European markets where there’s been good uptake of smart meters (he mentions France and the UK as interesting future possibilities). While Bari asserts the startup can adapt to regulatory differences in how energy markets are managed around Europe, he says smart meter penetration is essentially a prerequisite for its approach to work — so a market like Germany, where smart meter uptake is low, isn’t on its roadmap for now.
“The ambition is to create the largest residential virtual power plant and the consumer offer across Europe,” he also tells us. “This is a logical step, because everybody needs electricity, essentially. So the market is, like every market, quite huge when you can access a lot of consumers. And we’re still adding a lot of customers in Sweden till this day, since there’s more than 2 million detached homes and over 4 million homes.”
“So the markets are really, really big in Nordics — but the ambition is to become the largest player in Europe.”
Greenely’s Series A was led by Belgian investment company Korys, with existing investor Luminar Ventures and other current shareholders also participating. It has raised around €15M to date, including this latest round and a €2.5M seed round back in 2019.
Commenting on the Series A funding in a joint statement, Korys’ Brieuc de Hults, investment director, and Quentin Dupont, investment manager, wrote: “Greenely is a remarkable company, willing to revolutionize the way households consume electricity and positively contribute to a net-zero future, exemplifying the type of impactful company we want to support. We are thrilled to partner with Tanmoy and the team in this next exciting chapter for Greenely and to support their geographic and product expansion.”
*Not to be confused with French carbon-emission tracking startup, Greenly.
This report was updated with a correction to the upper bound figure for average savings for EV owners after we were given an incorrect figure during our interview
Fintech startup Forward grabs $16M to take on Stripe, lead future of integrated payments
After Brandon Lloyd sold his second company, Bypass, a payments and point-of-sale software company for sports and entertainment, to Fiserv in 2020, he dove more into the payments industry and realized something: Software companies were getting a raw deal from the payments provider industry.
“Companies like Stripe originally built that platform for an online merchant to be able to take credit cards easily,” Lloyd told TechCrunch. “As the distribution has gone through software companies to merchants, the software companies need support. Instead of them generating revenue and doubling their SaaS revenue, they’re giving all of the payments revenue to their payments provider.”
It’s not uncommon for a software company to be paying 2.9% and 30 cents for each transaction, and Lloyd believes they shouldn’t be paying that. Instead, he said their costs should be closer to 2% — and that’s the spread that leads leaves them with a huge business opportunity.
So Lloyd left Fiserv in June 2023, taking with him colleagues Derek Victory and Danielle Madison to form Austin-based Forward to take what they learned from the payments industry to the vertical SaaS community.
Forward works by enabling SaaS companies rent its offerings out as a service, collecting its own fees. Its software sits within its customers software, thus saving them money. Forward manages authorization, settles transactions, moves money and handles reconciliation. And, because there are less payment fees, customers get some of those savings back.
Lloyd said Forward is also focused on program design, enabling technical integration in less than a week, on-going merchant sales support and the ability to migrate to a registered payment facilitator at any time.
It’s a lofty goal to take on the likes of Stripe and other payments infrastructure companies, however, Lloyd believes that Forward’s model has an advantage by shifting the economics back to SaaS companies and help them save money.
“The software company acquired customers to enable payments through their software application, but when they go to execute that, very few of them succeed at scale,” Lloyd said. “In some cases, that opportunity is equal to what their software revenue is. If they execute payments correctly, SaaS companies can double the size of that company from a revenue perspective.”
Forward is still early. It started processing payments in the fourth quarter of 2023 in a beta period. It has done a few million transactions since then. It also already counts former employer Fiserv as a customer. The strategic partnership enables Fiserv to expand into the managed PayFac category and bring products to market faster to the over 1,500 SaaS companies processing tens of billions a year in payments volume.
Lloyd didn’t get specific, but did say the company was generating revenue. And also paying out revenue to its SaaS customers. For example, each transaction that runs through Forward’s platform, the software companies are, on average, getting back 70 cents by adding payments as a product.
That’s gotten investors excited, too. On Thursday Forward announced $16 million in seed financing. Commerce Ventures, Elefund and Fiserv led the round.
Lloyd intends to use the new funding to expand the company’s capacity in terms of customers and on technology development, including machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“We have a lot of empathy for software companies because we built them ourselves,”Lloyd said. “When we meet our clients, they remind us of ourselves 10 or 15 years ago. We’re genuinely rooting for them, and I think that’s a breath of fresh air in the payments ecosystem.”
Elo Life Systems grabs another $20.5M to get its monk fruit sweetener to market
A year after securing $24.5 million in Series A capital, ingredient company Elo Life Systems raised a $20.5 million Series A extension from existing investors.
North Carolina-based Elo Life launched in 2021 and focuses on a number of technologies from developing plant-based sweeteners to crop protection. Its first product, launching in 2026, will be a natural, monk fruit-derived sweetener that Elo Life touts is 300 times sweeter than sugar without the calories. It also has a partnership with Dole to create a fungal-resistant Cavendish banana.
Other developments in the works include the production of other ingredients like proteins, natural preservatives, flavors and bioactive compounds.
Leveraging new technologies, like molecular farming, gene-editing and precision fermentation, Elo Life and others are “unlocking whole new categories of ingredients, and completely reinventing our food supply chain,” said Elo Life CEO Todd Rands. That said, this transformation in food ingredients wasn’t without some challenges.
“We’ve seen well-documented headwinds for ag/food tech companies this year,” he said. “However, hype was met by cold reality. Investors weren’t finding the returns they expected in many categories and pulled back from over-valued companies where additional investments weren’t justified. Also, inflation created even more pressure on food prices, which impacts consumers’ willingness to adopt new technologies that add cost.”
Rands went on to explain that all of that was “a wake-up call for all of us.” Elo Life works to reduce monk fruit’s cost and carbon footprint through local production via molecular farming. Simply put, it uses plants as “biofactories” to produce the monk fruit sweetener in other easier-to grow-crops, like watermelons and sugar beets.
Meanwhile, Rands expects to deploy the new funding over the next two years as Elo Life builds its supply chain in preparation for its first sweetener products.
It will also work on technology development that includes a partnership with a large non-governmental organization to make staple nutrition crops, like cassava and cowpea, more productive and resistant to the effects of climate change in third-world countries.
Where Elo Life’s first three years were spent on R&D to create and optimize the sweetener, these next two years will be spent on talking to growers and processors for supply, ingredient companies for commercialization and regulators to secure approvals, Rands said.
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“It’s time for Elo to turn outwards and build scale,” he said. “We’ve been adding new people to the team almost every month to increase Elo’s capabilities and expand our capacity. Increased momentum — the product of mass and velocity — is being achieved on all fronts. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come in such a short time.”
DCVC Bio and Novo Holdings jointly led the funding and were joined by Hanwha Next Generation Opportunity Fund, AccelR8 and Alexandria Venture Investments. This new cash infusion gives Elo Life $45 million in venture-backed capital to date.
Rands said the company planned for another round of funding late last year or early 2024, and the extension, or Series A2 round, could grow. He declined to comment on company valuation other than to say “it was not a down round.”
“We’ve generated value and critical momentum over the past two years in building a seasoned management team, expanding our technical, manufacturing and commercial capabilities and achieving product milestones,” Rands told TechCrunch via email.
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SUMA Wealth grabs $2.2M as its financial platforms reach 1M users
SUMA Wealth now has $2.2 million in new capital to continue developing financial tools, content and live and digital activations for young U.S. Latinos to build wealth.
Radicle Impact led the investment with participation from Vamos Ventures, OVO fund and American Heart Association Impact fund. They join investors from previous rounds, including Ulu Ventures, Female Founders Fund and Chingona Ventures. This brings SUMA’s total funding to $5.5 million dollars.
We first profiled the California-based fintech company when it exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022. Beatriz Acevedo started the company with Mary Hernandez and Xavier Gutierrez a few years ago to build a financial app designed for Latinos — a demographic she believes is often overlooked.
It offers in-culture financial content, products and experiences to help them gain control of their economic power and build wealth. SUMA Wealth also works with financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, looking to engage with the Latino demographic.
“We really lean hard into the AI features to be able to highly personalize how you spend your money and how you can do better, but also that our community comes from so many different countries of origin,” Acevedo told TechCrunch. “It was very important that even on the features, even on the tone and the voice, even on the content that we serve you for education on what you’re trying to learn and accomplish, we do it in a way that is fully customized and personalized.”
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That means that if you’re Venezuelan, the app knows that and uses references and examples of things that are familiar to that culture or uses a tone similar to one of your family members, she explained.
In addition to the consumer app, Acevedo was also working on an enterprise offering. That has since launched, as did a new version of the app in December, and both of those entities have now reached 1 million users.
Apparently, that personalization is catching on with users. SUMA Wealth’s platforms have seen 62% annual user growth. The app continues to be free for users, however, the company is monetizing its partnerships with different brands, including dating app Match.com, or for features such as more personalized coaching. The enterprise app is also subscription-based for companies to buy for employees or their own customers.
And while Acevedo built SUMA Wealth for young U.S. Latinos and their families, what has surprised her is the adoption of the app by non-Latinos.
“Thirty percent are not Latinos, even though our jokes, our insights and our images are very unapologetically Latino,” Acevedo said. “This is a place where people feel welcome. We’re excited to see that not just Latinos have gravitated to the app and find our tools and our content useful.”
In addition to the customer growth, SUMA Wealth’s revenue increased nearly five times in the past year. It has also made some acquisitions: Intellecto, a learning management system to further personalize the user learning experience.
This followed the February 2023 acquisition of savings and personal finance platform Reel. As part of that acquisition, Reel co-founder and CEO Daniela Corrente joined SUMA as chief strategy and business officer.
Meanwhile, this new funding will go toward the Intellecto acquisition as well on new hires across engineering, product and sales. The company is also working on expanding its technology offerings for more AI personalization, data and analytics.
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Functional beverage startup Odyssey grabs $6M to accelerate energy drink growth
Odyssey, a mushroom-based functional energy beverage maker, raised another $6 million in an equity investment to give it $14 million in total funding since launching its first drink two years ago.
Odyssey’s products tap into the health benefits of Lion’s Mane and Cordyceps mushrooms to produce a drink that combines an energy boost with 2,750 milligrams of the mushrooms to provide cognitive clarity and focus.
Lion’s Mane, in particular, was shown to positively impact cognitive function and mood in young adults, according to a 2023 National Institutes of Health pilot study.
Scott Frohman, founder and CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Odyssey, first learned about the benefits of certain mushrooms from a friend making a mushroom powder to mix in drinks.
“I started adding it to my coffee, and I realized that everything was more clear,” he told TechCrunch. “The best part was when I got to work, I realized that I didn’t need that second cup of coffee. On top of that, I just felt I was just more present and was able to jump to my work.”
A $58M round for this European Mycelium startup shows the tech is on the cusp of big things
However, Frohman didn’t exactly like how the powder affected the taste and texture of the drinks, and preferred an energy drink delivery, so he began working on Odyssey in 2021. Today, the company has 11 SKUs, including flavors like Passion Fruit Orange/Mango, Dragon Fruit Lemonade and Blackberry Lemon Twist.
The energy in the drinks come from a combination of L-Theanine, ginseng and green tea caffeine. And there is less added sugar to help minimize “the jitters” and sugar crashes typically associated with traditional energy drinks, Frohman said. For those who want even more of a caffeine boost, the company recently introduced the Odyssey 222 line with 222 milligrams of caffeine in addition to the mushrooms.
Over 5,000 stores, including Publix, CVS, GNC, Erewhon, 7-Eleven, Thrive Market, Wegmans and Bristol Farms carry Odyssey products. Frohman didn’t provide growth metrics, but did say the company is seeing sales pick up in terms of three to five cans per week per SKU being sold.
Growth in the functional beverage industry accelerated in recent years as consumers increasingly looked for healthier foods. The global functional soda category is expected to be valued at $208 billion by 2027. That’s inspired new brands to emerge and enticed some venture capitalists to invest in the sector.
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During this time, we saw brands like healthier soda companies Poppi and Olipop grab capital in 2022, while The Ryl Company raised $6.7 million in early 2023 for its line of functional ready-to-drink tea.
Odyssey also joins a long list of companies leveraging mushrooms and mycelium, the root of the mushroom, to make everything from alternative proteins to leather-like materials to building materials. Companies like Infinite Roots are even growing mushrooms for commercialization purposes.
“As the timing is no doubt right, mycelium can win over consumers with taste, nutritional, functional, scalable and impact-related benefits,” said PeakBridge CTO Maya Schushan Orgad in a review of mycelium trends.
Meanwhile, Odyssey’s new funding round includes strategic investor Richard Laver from Rocket Beverage Group, who joins a group of existing stakeholders contributing 50% of the total raised amount.
Frohman plans to allocate the capital toward inventory to keep distribution going and hiring in the areas of sales and marketing.
“We don’t see this as just a product, but a whole movement,” Frohman said.
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