Accacia, a decarbonization platform focusing on the real estate and infrastructure sectors, announced today it closed a $6.5 million pre-Series A funding round led by Illuminate Financial. AC Ventures also participated in this round, with support from early backers Accel and B Capital.
Real estate/construction activity contributes to about 40% of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. However, the sector lacks the tools to measure climate risks and define decarbonization pathways. Launched in 2022 by INSEAD alumni Annu Talreja and co-founders Piyush Chitkara and Jagmohan Garg, Accacia offers an AI-enabled SaaS platform that helps real estate asset managers, owners, and developers track their emissions and design their decarbonization journey.
Decarbonization of real estate is one of the most significant opportunities today. Trillions of dollars in investment are required in the next decade to get the real estate industry to net zero. And Accacia’s platform integrates with existing property management, energy management, and procurement systems for automating real-time data capturing and tracking, making it the fastest and most affordable solution for real estate companies on their path to net zero. The real estate industry has recently become the focus of climate solutions, with several significant VC funds raising dedicated capital to decarbonise buildings.
KEY QUOTES:
“This funding comes at a crucial juncture as the Securities & 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 sqft of real estate and are poised to leverage this opportunity and scale globally.”
- Annu Talreja, Founder and CEO at Accacia
“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.”
- Rezso Szabo, Partner at Illuminate Financial
“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.”
- Helen Wong, Managing Partner at AC Ventures
