Australia’s Avarni raises $3m to speed up decarbonization efforts

Australian carbon management startup Avarni raised $3 million to streamline the future of carbon management in a funding round led by deep tech venture firm Main Sequence.

The funding round was also participated by Vulpes Ventures and Common Sense Ventures, Avarni said in a statement.

“Since our launch roughly a year ago, we have made huge strides in Australia and globally to help companies continue to progress their decarbonization journey, and use our artificial intelligence (AI)-backed platform to allow businesses to access their Scope 3 emissions quickly, effectively and without the burden of significant cost,” Avarni Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Tony Yammine said.

Yammine said that to date, climate risk is one of the biggest concerns for executives, boards and shareholders and this problem is not going away anytime soon.

And as the business enters a new and a more exciting phase, Yammine said they hope to remain laser focused in providing extensive data sets and insights to become the go-to carbon management platform for companies and their advisors.

When it was founded in 2021, Avarni said team members met at a Sydney-based tech incubator and they saw a massive gap in the market on carbon reporting.

The founding team included Tony Yammine, who was previously a management consultant at KPMG Australia; Misha Cajic, Chief Product Officer and previously a product manager at Atlassian; and Anuj Paudel, Chief Technology Officer and the previous cloud network engineer at Macquarie Telecom Group.

Backed by Australian innovation and leadership, Avarni was able to create one of the world’s most comprehensive datasets on emissions using artificial intelligence to forecast the impact of different decarbonization scenarios.

Mike Zimmerman, a partner from Main Sequence, who is also joining the Avarni Board, said that despite the vast numbers of commitments to emissions targets, as well as the growing number of countries mandating disclosures, enterprises are struggling to understand, let alone manage their Scope 3 emissions.
Avarni’s traction with some of the world’s largest consultancies and their clients put them in a great position to help decarbonize the planet, Zimmerman added.

Since its inception a year ago, Avarni has quickly grown. The firm has so far analyzed more than $100 billion in corporate spending data and 150 million tonnes of CO2e in supply chains.

With its extensive data set, Avarni has secured deals with major consulting firms such as KPMG Australia, as well as other major global enterprises such as Point B and 5B that are focused on expanding their Scope 3 decarbonization solution sets.

Avarni is also a technology partner at the McKinsey Digital Capability Center that is part of McKinsey & Company’s global Digital Capability Center Network.

What Avarni has achieved since 2021 has been very phenomenal and they are on a strong trajectory despite the challenging economic environment, said Field Pickering, Managing Partner at Vulpes Ventures.

At the COP27, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported emissions that will have to be reduced before 2025 in order to limit temperature rises to 1.5C.

The Financial Stability Board also created a Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (the TCFD) to fully commit to market transparency when it comes to decarbonisation.