Esgrid, a Tallinn-based startup, has raised €500,000 from Lemonade Stand, EstBAN, Startup Wise Guys, Little Green Fund, and notable angels, including former employees of Pipedrive and Wise, such as Alvar Lumberg, Kairi Pauskar, Kair Käsper, and Martin Kõiva from Klaus (Estonia’s first successful exit of 2024). This funding will be used to develop accessible value chain sustainability management tools for enterprise and financial sector clients.
“To reach our climate goals, we need data that helps direct money to sustainable companies. The Esgrid team not only has a great vision for building the right tools and systems for this purpose, but they also move fast. They landed their first customer before writing any code, building the product alongside them. They’ve nailed solving a big pain point for their customers,” says Siim Teller, the managing partner at Lemonade Stand.
Esgrid helps medium-sized enterprises and financial institutions effectively manage their value chain sustainability at an affordable cost. As of now, only a small portion of credit and procurement decisions consider the sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), despite comprising 60% of enterprise and financial sector value chains. Current tools for managing environmental, social, and governance impacts are either unavailable or high-priced, with costs between 50,000€ to 100,000€ per year. Esgrid promises to reduce this annual cost by 10 times and has developed AI-assisted functions to assist users in providing and analyzing ESG data.
Esgrid founding team: Oksana Tolmatšova, Katrin Isotamm, Ott Ilves, and Jevgeni Bogatõrjov
“Our vision is a world where sustainability management is a natural part of daily business at companies of any size. By creating an easy way to understand and improve the sustainability of small and medium-sized companies in value chains, we help the market direct more capital towards sustainable business practices and contribute to solving critical environmental and social issues,” said Oksana Tolmatšova, CEO of Esgrid.
Its track record now goes beyond Estonia. Esgrid debuted in the Lithuanian market in May by partnering with Fjord Bank. Chief Risk Officer Kristina Simonovič expressed excitement about the collaboration, highlighting the benefits of using Esgrid’s tool to conduct ESG assessments of their partners. As noted, it allows partners to evaluate their ESG performance, benchmark against competitors, and work towards continuous improvement and better competitiveness.
Despite its early age, it’s not the first time the company raises funds. Founded in 2023, Esgrid launched publicly in December and won a €150,000 syndicate investment award from EstBAN at sTARTUp Day in January 2024. The company’s four founders, Oksana Tolmatšova, Katrin Isotamm, Ott Ilves, and Jevgeni Bogatõrjov, bring extensive experience from companies like Swedbank, Telia, Katana, and Pipedrive. To date, Esgrid has signed enterprise customers such as Ibis Hotel, Nordic Milk and Utilitas and financial sector companies like Specialist VC and Fjord Bank. Over 100 companies are now providing ESG data on the platform.
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