Novisto Raises $8 Million Series A Round To Breakthrough ESG Silos With AI-Powered Workflow

Novisto Raises $8 Million Series A Round To Breakthrough ESG Silos With AI-Powered Workflow

On 25^th May 2021, Novisto, a next generation Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) cloud-hosted software provider, raised CAD $9.6 million (USD $8 million) in a Series A round, led by White Star Capital, a New York-headquartered venture capital firm. Diagram Ventures also invested in the funding having previously led the vendor’s $1.5 million seed round last year. Founded in 2019, Novisto has quickly established itself as a prominent player in the corporate ESG software space boasting more than 20 large enterprise customers such as JetBlue and TMX Group as well as securing credentials as an official data licensee of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and a CDP Accredited solutions provider.

This funding is significant for several reasons. Firstly, Verdantix research into ESG information frameworks has found that external requests for ESG data will continue to explode and that no single software application can currently help firms operationalize an ESG strategy across disclosures, risk and performance improvement. Novisto’s vision is to establish an ERP-like system for collaborative cross-functional workflows that can break down ESG silos across the firm. This funding puts Novisto in a strong position to grow its engineering and product teams with an eye towards building automated workflow-driven solutions for ESG information management that reduce the likelihood of manual data entry, normalization, and calculation errors.

Secondly, the funding enables Novisto to accelerate its product development efforts for ESG data analytics and benchmarking. Beyond an intuitive interface for building sustainability reports, Novisto also enables ESG practitioners to leverage artificial intelligence for ESG benchmarking. For example, Novisto users can upload industry peer sustainability reports in PDF and extract information based on metrics, a specific questionnaire field from the CDP, or by custom text. As a result, existing ESG practitioners are also increasingly using Novisto as centralized ESG analytics platform after integrating data from other software providers such as Workday, SAP and IBM.

Thirdly, the additional funding will help Novisto further expand its footprint outside of North America into Europe; and provide cross-sell opportunities among large multinational firms. The vendor currently has a strong footprint across financial services, technology and communications, healthcare, and consumer goods entities. For more information on ESG technologies, visit the Verdantix ESG and Sustainability research website.