Borderstep spin-off closes financing round
The Borderstep spin-off ImpactNexus has now successfully concluded its first round of financing.
Reliable assessment of the ecological and social impacts of companies is becoming increasingly important. And is one of the research priorities of the Borderstep Institute. This requires reliable data and smart tools for investors and companies alike. These are provided by the Borderstep spin-off ImpactNexus. ImpactNexus.io has now closed its first financing round of 800k€. This will allow it to fully pursue its growth targets for 2023.
The start-up offers sustainability reporting and impact management solutions. The target group of the offering is primarily venture capital and private equity portfolio managers.
ImpactNexus was developed in close cooperation with the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability as a spin-off. Borderstep founder and director Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter supports the project as shareholder and strategic advisor.
Background
The financing industry is currently facing a major challenge: the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). According to this regulation, providers of financial products must submit an annual report by June 2023 for the first time on how they incorporate sustainability into their decision-making processes for their financial products and what impact they have on the environment, climate and society. The more sustainability-oriented a fund is, the higher the reporting requirements. This leads to high costs and effort for many providers. In addition, there is often a lack of know-how and an effective data flow between the various stakeholders in their portfolio.
10 x less time and cost to achieve sustainability goals
ImpactNexus develops innovative software-as-a-service solutions for this purpose. The goal is to reduce time and costs for sustainability reporting and optimization measures by a factor of 10.
This includes the option to query sustainability data from portfolio companies with just a few clicks and to generate SFDR reports in accordance with the official guidelines of the European Commission. The growing NEXUS database enables an automated assessment of the impact of portfolio companies and additionally provides tailored suggestions for optimization.
Dr. Jannic Horne, CEO of ImpactNexus: “With our digital solution, fund managers can assess the social and environmental impact of their portfolio and efficiently report to their diverse stakeholders while optimizing sustainability performance.”
Vision: Sustainability management for medium-sized companies
With an experienced team of sustainability experts, software developers and data scientists, ImpactNexus is also targeting medium-sized businesses in the medium term. These companies suffer greatly from the lack of sustainability consulting. Access to the NEXUS database potentially offers them an efficient, digital way to optimize their sustainability performance.
The assessment and measurement approaches of the ImpactNexus software are thereby based on the latest academic research and international best practices such as the Impact Management Project, IRIS+ or DIN SPEC 90051-1, a German ISO specification co-developed by Borderstep and the ImpactNexus team. Dr. Constanze Trautwein led the development of “DIN SPEC 90051-1: Standard for the Sustainability Assessment of Start-ups” for Borderstep and is part of the founding team of ImpactNexus.
Dr. Constanze Trautwein, Chief Product Officer ImpactNexus, Borderstep Research Fellow: “The Borderstep Institute supported us as a founding team with practical and scientific elements even before the start-up. This gave stability to the founding process and embedded ImpactNexus in a strong network right at the start.”
Sustainable business = future
The capital from the financing round will now be used for further product development. Investors such as Vireo Ventures, the female investor network encourageventures, and other business angels and funding providers participated in the round.
Jörg Walden, investor and advisor to ImpactNexus, has himself already founded companies in the context of compliance and sustainability reporting, including iPoint and CircularTree.
Jörg Walden, Serial Entrepreneur, Investor and Advisor ImpactNexus: “The future belongs entirely to companies that act sustainably, i.e. climate-neutral and in the spirit of the circular economy. ImpactNexus, with its database and software solutions, offers an important building block to achieve sustainability goals faster.”