Swedish Climate fintech startup Datia raises $3.4M to simplify investors’ transition to sustainable finance

With many issues facing our world today, businesses and big corporations are no longer just focusing on short-term profit but also on their impacts on society and the world at large. Over the past few years, some of these companies have adopted non-financial factors and a more stakeholder-centric approach to doing business using what is known as ESG.

ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. Investors and businesses alike are increasingly applying ESG as criteria for making decisions about their company’s operations, global impacts, and what they invest their money on. For example, companies are now divesting from fossil fuels projects to investing in renewables like solar and wind.

To further help companies to manage and improve their ESG footprint and reporting, Datia, a Stockholm, Sweden-based Climate fintech startup has developed solutions to help organizations streamline ESG workflows allowing for easy understanding of the impact of portfolios, regulatory reporting, and pre-trade screening.

Today, Datia announced it has raised $3.4M in a Seed funding to streamline ESG workflows and fuel expansion across Europe. The round was led by pan-European venture capital firm Nauta Capital, with participation from Accel Starter Ramzi Rizk, Zenloop’s founder Paul Schwarzenholz, Söderberg & Partners, and Sting.

Datia’s platform performs sustainability calculations for hundreds of data points like carbon footprint, gender pay gap and energy usage on companies and funds. The company works with asset managers, wealth advisors, and platforms, allowing for measuring the impact of portfolios, regulatory reporting, and screening. Datia’s platform features hundreds of data points for over 600,000 financial instruments and 200,000 funds.

Founded in 2019 by CEO Juan Manuel Serruya and COO Manne Larsson, Datia is a climate fintech company on a mission to empower investors’ transition to sustainable finance. To date, Datia has a customer network with over $100B in assets under management (AUM).

Before founding Datio, Serruya was an early employee at Spotify as Head of Engineering for Creator Studio, an R&D group consisting of 5 product development teams with a wide portfolio of an industry facing platforms including Spotify for Artists, Spotify for Podcasters, new artistic expression and storytelling formats for artists and their teams.

Manne Larsson previously worked at venture capital firm EQT Ventures as an investor, and was employee #2 and VP of Business Development at InsiderLog, a Market Abuse Regulation SaaS solution that was acquired by Euronext in 2016.

Since the launch of its platform in 2020, Datia has onboarded an impressive roster of clients including Spiltan Fonder, Alcur Fonder, and Atlant Fonder, bringing their assets under management to over $100 billion.

Listed as one of SiftedEU’s Swedish companies to watch in the green fintech space, the funding will support its plans of scaling across Europe, hiring key talent, and expanding its efforts to include wealth advisors and neo-bankers. It will also help to accelerate the research and development of its ESG tools and sustainability data.

Juan Manuel Serruya, Founder and CEO of Datia, said, “Our purpose is to support investors in their sustainability work, old-school ESG ratings aren’t enough anymore. Increasingly the challenge is integrating real, hard data into the investment process, complying with rapidly changing regulations and client demands for sustainability. Investors face challenges collecting hundreds of ESG data points, incorporating them into their investment process, and complying with complex regulatory client demands. Datia is an investor-first solution for that.”

The global ESG reporting market is growing rapidly and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17% to reach $16 billion by 2027. At the same time, the number of sustainable finance regulations and policy interventions is also accelerating, putting pressure on investors to meet market and regulatory demands.

Guillem Sague, Berlin-based Nauta Capital Partner and recently appointed Datia board member, adds: “ESG can have a positive effect on the financial performance and reduce overall risk. Data’s ability to help the investor with ESG data means less of a headache and more transparent analysis. Ultimately, it brings the investor forward into the future of sustainable finance.”