Helping Cities Solve Climate Challenge

Kausal, which provides local governments with a software platform for tracking and implementing sustainability measures targets German-speaking markets and North America with fresh seed funding of 880,000 euros from an investor consortium including Innovestor and Spanish impact fund Zubi Capital.

"For us, the biggest milestone is to show that this is really scalable on different markets and not sustained in Finland, for instance," co-founder Sonja-Maria Ignatius said in the NatureBacked podcast. 

Ignatius, an ex-Helsinki climate specialist, and her co-founders set up the company to make sure Helsinki keeps its promises to become carbon neutral. Once the service was launched, other cities followed. Kausal currently works with over 40 cities, including San Diego and Zurich.

The focus is set clearly on the public sector, even though the platform could be adapted for corporate use.

"It was a very natural step as all the founders had experience within the public sector," Ignatius said.

"It's true that the sale cycles can be long sometimes. But on the other hand, city governments are very reliable, they pay their bills. Also, once you have gotten in, and you have this in their budget, they are not going to be every year like, Hey, do we want this or not, but they are also very sticky as customers," she said.

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